


Wherever It Is, We Can Go

by latecamellia (caramarie)



Series: Wherever We Can Go [1]
Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: 7 Seeds AU, Animal Harm, Blood and Injury, Canon Divergence, Dreamcatcher ensemble, Gen, Illness, Post-Apocalypse, Wilderness Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24229144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caramarie/pseuds/latecamellia
Summary: Some hundreds of years ago, the world ended. Now the eight of them have to survive what’s left.A 7 Seeds AU.
Relationships: Choi San & Park Seonghwa, Implied San/Wooyoung, Jeong Yunho & Kang Yeosang
Series: Wherever We Can Go [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952494
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

Hongjoong was the last one to wake up in the new world.

At first, nothing seemed abnormal; it was just Jongho shaking him awake because he’d fallen asleep somewhere weird again. Jongho sounded anxious though, as if Hongjoong had slept through something important.

‘I’m up,’ he said, sitting up and swinging his legs off the bed in one motion – and then he stopped, taking in their surroundings. Because this wasn’t their dorm. It wasn’t a waiting room, or a hotel room, or any other place that it might have been reasonable for him to fall asleep. ‘Where are we?’

They were in a circular room, empty except for the eight beds laid out like the lines of a compass. Only they weren’t beds, exactly – more like the sort of thing you might see in a sci-fi movie. It wasn’t a room; it was a facility.

‘What is this, another hidden camera thing?’ Wooyoung sat leaned over, his hands at his temples like he had a headache.

‘I think moving us in our sleep is taking things a bit far,’ Jongho said. There was too much strain in his voice for it to be a joke.

There was one door. Hongjoong walked over to test the handle, half-expecting it to be locked – but the handle turned. He looked back at the others with a shrug, and opened the door.

It took a moment for the lights in the hallway to flicker on. The hallway was circular too, running in either direction around the room they’d woken in.

Mingi came up behind Hongjoong, and leaned his weight on Hongjoong’s shoulder.

‘Have we been kidnapped?’ he asked. His voice was groggy, like he was still waking up.

There was no sound from the hallway. But standing there, Hongjoong could feel the floor tilting softly beneath him. Like they were on water.

‘I think –’ Hongjoong said, and he swallowed, because his throat was dry – ‘yes, maybe we have?’

***

It wasn’t a large facility. There was the room they’d woken in; the hallway with eight storage lockers, labelled by name, and backpacks inside them. There were two inflatable life rafts, and the pumps to go with them. There were hatches in the floor – one led to what seemed like an engine room, while the other was jammed so tight that even Jongho couldn’t get it open.

And then there was the door that led outside. That too was hatched, with an airlock before it led out into the open air.

The very wide open air. They were on the ocean.

Wooyoung pushed past Hongjoong in the doorway, and out onto the metal platform. Hongjoong and the others followed him out. It was a warm day, and the water was still, unruffled all the way out to the horizon. No land in sight.

‘This is definitely a hidden camera thing,’ Wooyoung said, turning 180 degrees to look back at the structure. ‘We’re on a boat.’ He frowned. ‘Is it a boat?’ The shape was wrong, and the outer walls were crusted with barnacles and other sea life.

‘Were we underwater?’ Seonghwa asked.

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Jongho said.

Hongjoong began to walk along the platform, which curved around the structure. He didn’t listen to the argument happening behind him, about what sort of submarine had a _deck_ , and anyway, where were the crew, and what were the eight of them doing here? He wasn’t, in that moment, concerned with any of that.

But when he came around the side, he could breathe a sigh of relief. The horizon wasn’t just blue on blue; there was land out there. Green land, with hills, and mountains gone hazy with distance.

‘We’re pretty far out,’ Mingi said. Hongjoong hadn’t realised he’d followed. ‘What do you think this is, some kind of survival show?’

‘There would be cameras then,’ Hongjoong said. He gestured a hand to the wall, with its crust of sea life. ‘You think they’ve got hidden cameras in that?’

Mingi pretended to inspect the wall. ‘Special water-resistant cameras? They put them inside the barnacles.’

Hongjoong choked back a laugh, only to resist the urge to scream.

‘Well, we know there’s no food,’ Mingi said. ‘Unless it’s behind that other hatch. So …’

‘So we have to go out _there_ ,’ Hongjoong said. ‘That’s what the life rafts are for.’

‘Right.’

It couldn’t be that far away, Hongjoong thought. It was hard to judge distance from out at sea. Or maybe if they looked around some more they’d find something else, something that would make sense of their waking up here. They just had to look harder.

They reconvened in the central room, where San had taken one of the backpacks and spread its contents out on the floor. It was full of practical things – a sleeping bag; a metal water flask, which San mournfully declared to be empty; a foldaway hunting knife; rope; spare clothes. The other bags were similar, although there were some items that only one of them had – Yunho had a compass; Yeosang had a pair of binoculars. It was as if they were being sent on a camping trip.

‘What’re we meant to do with all this?’ San said. He flicked the knife open in his hand, and brushed his thumb over the edge – then snapped it shut again, seeing the cut bloom blood against his skin.

‘Yeah, they couldn’t have left us a cellphone?’ Wooyoung said. He collapsed on the floor next to San. ‘Or at least some snacks.’

‘We’re obviously not meant to stay here,’ Hongjoong said.

‘You don’t think the company did this?’ Seonghwa said. He sat with his knees pulled up, hugging them. ‘They would have said _something_ , right?’

‘I don’t think it was the company.’

‘Then they must be looking for us,’ San said. ‘You can’t just disappear a whole idol group and expect no-one to notice.’

‘Whoever did it obviously has money,’ Jongho said. ‘It’s not like they’ve just locked us up in a warehouse.’

‘I think Hongjoong’s right,’ Yunho said. ‘We can’t just stay here. We don’t even have any drinking water – we can’t just wait around and hope for rescue.’

‘If we can make it to land,’ Hongjoong said, ‘then we can find people. We can work out then what’s going on. We can’t do anything out here.’

‘Hongjoong’s just looking for an excuse to be a real captain,’ Jongho said.

‘Hey, there’s two life rafts,’ Hongjoong said. ‘That’s got to make me at least a commodore, right?’

Mingi, at least, laughed.

***

They set about pumping up the life rafts; arguing about who did what, they could almost forget the situation. It _could_ have been a set-up by the company.

Except that it really was just the eight of them – no staff, no-one to call on if a life raft sprung a leak, or if they drifted apart …

‘Is that even Korea?’ Seonghwa asked. He was looking out at the landscape on the horizon.

‘Nah, we’ve got to be somewhere tropical,’ Wooyoung said. He sat on the edge of the platform, shoes off and bare feet in the ocean. ‘It’s way too hot otherwise.’ It felt more like midsummer rather than spring.

‘Wherever it is, it’s better than being at sea,’ Hongjoong said firmly. The idea that it might _not_ be Korea was disturbing. That they could have been taken halfway across the world and not even notice it happening ...

‘What if there’s bears?’ Mingi asked. ‘We don’t know what’s out there.’

‘If there’s bears, Jongho will fight them off,’ San said.

‘Do bears even live in the tropics?’

‘Sun bears do.’

‘Sun bears aren’t very big,’ Jongho said. ‘I could take a sun bear.’ He finished tying the life rafts together, and pushed them onto the water.

With the life rafts floating there, the conversation died away.

‘I guess I’ll go first,’ Hongjoong said. He clambered onto the life raft nervously. They were circular, like the room they’d woken in, with a sort of tent in the middle. It didn’t seem like it would be much protection from the weather, should they need it.

But it was a fine day.

Seonghwa handed Hongjoong his backpack, and then took to the other life raft.

It was going to be okay, Hongjoong told himself. _Pretend it’s just a game._

They each climbed onto the life rafts, and then pushed off.

***

The trip to shore turned out to be not much of an adventure; they took turns rowing, complained about the heat, about hunger. The sun began to set against the hills, so that even as they got closer they couldn’t make out details. The hills were dark against the twilighting sky.

Strangely dark, in fact. You would have expected there to be lights along the coast. It wasn’t as if they’d stumbled across a deserted island; the landmass was too big for that. It meant that the approach to shore was more discomforting than a relief.

‘It doesn’t look like we’re near any towns,’ Mingi said.

‘I don’t mind sleeping on the beach,’ Yunho said, ‘as long as it stays still.’

It was properly night by the time they dragged the life rafts onshore. The night itself was not dark, though – the sky was bright with stars, and they hardly needed their torches.

No way, then, that this was home. Not with all those stars. The area seemed completely bereft of civilisation – not just dark but quiet, the only sound the waves and the quiet whirr of insects in the distance. It was cooler now, less tropical feeling.

They dragged the life rafts above the tide line, and then collapsed, each of them, on the sand.

‘I know we should try and find water,’ Jongho said, ‘but I really just want to lie here for a while.’

Hongjoong groaned. ‘Let’s give it five minutes.’

There was no way to tell how long they actually spent. The moon climbed higher in the sky, and Seonghwa got restless. He went to the life rafts, letting the air out so he could pack them away.

‘Can’t we just leave them?’ San asked. He shone his torch toward Seonghwa, to make it easier.

Seonghwa frowned. ‘That wouldn’t be very environmentally friendly.’

‘We might need them again too,’ Hongjoong said.

‘Why?’ San turned his head toward Hongjoong’s voice. ‘We’re going to get rescued.’

‘Yes, right,’ Hongjoong said. ‘All the same.’ He hadn’t pointed it out to the others before, but the item he had that the others didn’t was a set of maps. They were rolled up in a slim case to protect them. Most of them were topographic maps, but one showed the Korean peninsula as a whole, with crosses marked on it. As if it were a treasure map.

But that didn’t make any sense. That was why he hadn’t shown it to the others; he didn’t want it to make sense, or to think too deeply about what it implied. But it meant he wasn’t comfortable disposing of anything too casually.

‘Should we try to build a fire?’ Mingi asked. ‘There was a flint stone in my bag.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ Hongjoong said. He hesitated. ‘Do you know how to build a fire?’

‘Sure; I’ve built loads,’ Mingi said. ‘We’ll need kindling and stuff though.’

It wasn’t hard to find driftwood, even by torchlight, and there were grasses growing higher on the beach that could be combed for tinder. It took Mingi a couple of goes to get it to catch, but then the flames took hold, and he breathed a sigh of relief. It was a strange relief – that they could manage this much.

The idea of looking for food or water was abandoned; for now, they kept close to the fire. And then slept. 

***

Yeosang wasn’t sure what it was that woke him up. He’d heard something maybe – some animal, moving in the bush. But there was nothing he could see – only the eight of them, and the embers of the fire – and nothing to hear.

It felt very lonely.

Now he was awake, he didn’t think he could get back to sleep. The sleeping bag was damp against the bare sand; he was too aware of how uncomfortable it was. Once he’d noticed he couldn’t unnotice it; he got up, and he went to sit further down the shore, skipping back from the waves when they nipped him.

He watched the stars.

Later, one of the others came to join him – Yunho, recognisable by his silhouette even before he spoke.

‘Aren’t you freezing?’ he asked. He’d kept his own sleeping bag with him, draped around his shoulders.

‘It’s not that bad,’ Yeosang said. Still, when Yunho sat down beside him, Yeosang leaned unconsciously toward his warmth.

‘You know the stars move?’ Yeosang said. ‘You can see it on the horizon.’ He pointed, tracing an arc with his finger, as if that made it evident.

‘I guess we don’t usually get to see that sort of thing,’ Yunho said. ‘That’s if we could even _see_ the stars …’ He let his voice drift off. ‘At least we know we’re still on earth, right? You can see the constellations.’

‘Did you think maybe we’d woken up on another planet?’

‘It would make about as much sense. It’s not like we’ve been kidnapped for ransom.’

‘I guess not.’ Yeosang was trying not to think about that sort of thing.

Yunho sighed. ‘At least it’s all of us.’ He gave a sardonic smile that Yeosang couldn’t see. ‘Is that a bad thing to say?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Yeosang said. ‘Who’d want to be the one left behind?’ Not him. Everyone back home had to be worried. It was awful to think of being the cause of that worry, but still.

‘They’ll be looking for us.’ Yunho put his hand on Yeosang’s back, and Yeosang leaned into him.

‘I know. We just have to keep going till then.’ He said it like he was quoting someone, but Yunho didn’t call him on it.

He just waited with him, until the dawn came.


	2. Chapter 2

‘If we follow the shore,’ San said, ‘we gotta find a river at some point.’ The eight of them had started walking along the shore, hoping to find a jetty or a road or an old man fishing in the early morning. But so far, nothing.

‘Would you really wanna drink straight from a river?’ Wooyoung asked.

‘Right now,’ San said, ‘yes.’

‘We shouldn’t need to drink from a river,’ Jongho said. ‘There’s always towns along the coast. That’s gotta be true everywhere.’

They’d headed south, as judged by the position of the sun – they didn’t need Yunho’s compass to tell them that, although Yunho kept looking at it and frowning anyway.

Yeosang fell into step beside him. ‘Isn’t it working?’

‘I don’t know,’ Yunho said. ‘It’s after the equinox, right?’

‘The equinox? Sure.’

‘Even if we’re in the tropics,’ Yunho said, ‘shouldn’t the sun be rising further south?’ He gestured at the sun, still low on the horizon. It was definitely in the north-east of the sky.

It took Yeosang a moment to catch up with what he was saying. ‘You think we’re in the southern hemisphere?’ He looked around them, considering the landscape. It certainly felt familiar, with the hills and the greenery – but, he noticed then, not all the trees were green. The colours were dull in the early morning, but some of the leaves were definitely changing.

‘It’s not that, is it?’ he said. ‘It’s autumn.’

Yunho looked grim, and he nodded.

‘I guess we don’t know how long we were asleep ...’

‘It would have to be months.’

Yeosang was silent for a moment. ‘Maybe we’re wrong. We’re somewhere else and the trees are just … confused. I don’t know.’

‘Maybe,’ Yunho said. But neither of them felt convinced.

They came across a stream soon enough, emerging from the hills and running out into the sea. Only a small stream – they could cross it just getting their ankles wet – but it was fresh water.

San got his drink bottle out, but Seonghwa said sharply, ‘We should boil it first.’

‘Yeah, we don’t know where that water’s come from,’ Wooyoung said.

‘Yes, we do,’ San said, and pointed at the hills, which after all were uninhabited. But he didn’t argue any more than that.

‘We should try and find something to eat while we’re at it,’ Mingi said. ‘There’s gotta be shellfish and other things.’ He looked as appraisingly at the sea as if it were an open refrigerator.

Seonghwa built a fire while the others looked for what could be turned into breakfast – shellfish buried in the sand, or seaweed for stock. Jongho and Wooyoung ended up in the water, chasing crabs or chasing each other or chasing each other with crabs in their hands.

It could have been idyllic – something they were doing for fun. Except for Yunho and Yeosang pulling Hongjoong aside to explain about the direction of the sunrise. Except for San with a pile of cockles, peering up at the sky and asking, ‘Why aren’t there any seagulls?’

‘What’s that?’ Wooyoung had come back with two crabs, and was setting them after one another on the sand.

‘No birds,’ San said. ‘You’d think they’d be all “raarch” –’ he made a swooping motion – ‘but I haven’t even heard any.’

‘Oh yeah.’ Wooyoung caught one of the crabs, and placed it right next to San’s hand, close enough to nip. They weren’t large crabs, but San jerked his hand away, and then he snatched up the crab and put it in the pot with the cockles.

‘Hey!’ Wooyoung said.

‘It’s breakfast,’ San said. ‘That’s the breakfast pot.’

‘Hardly seems worth it,’ Wooyoung said, holding up his other crab and peering at the underside. ‘I guess the bigger ones live further out.’ He put the second crab in the pot, and poked at the other so that it couldn’t climb up the sides.

After the water had been boiled to Seonghwa’s satisfaction, they set about cooking their breakfast. It was somewhat plain, given the lack of seasoning or condiments, but they were too hungry to care.

‘I think we’re winning this survival programme,’ Wooyoung said, once he’d set his bowl aside.

‘Yeah, but we haven’t had to survive much yet,’ Jongho said. ‘Wait till you have to fight a tiger.’

‘I think we could take a tiger.’ Wooyoung lay back on the sand, as if he meant to go to sleep. ‘You’d distract it while the rest of us got away, right?’

‘If by distract it, you mean die horribly, sure.’

‘There’s probably not things like tigers,’ Hongjoong said. ‘We still can’t be sure, but –’ he flicked his eyes over to Yunho and Yeosang – ‘they left us a map.’

‘A map?’ Wooyoung sat up straight again. ‘You didn’t tell us that.’

Hongjoong took the case out his bag, gently, as if it were fragile, while the others crowded around him. He picked out the map of the whole country and laid it out on the sand, pressing the corners down gently.

As well as the crosses he’d noted earlier, there was another symbol, marked on the eastern coast – one of their icons. Except the symbol was on the land and they’d been at sea.

‘Yunho, you think they might have kept us asleep?’

Yunho looked flustered. ‘It would explain the season,’ he said. ‘It should be spring, but the sun’s in the wrong position, and the trees …’ The splashes of orange and red were obvious now, in the daylight.

‘Why would they keep us asleep though?’ Jongho asked. ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

‘Does anything about this make sense?’ San said. ‘Yunho, you’re saying we might have been missing for months?’ 

‘That’s not for sure …’

‘Then why hasn’t anyone been looking for us?’

‘Just because they were looking for us doesn’t mean they would have found us,’ Yeosang said. San flinched, although Yeosang hadn’t meant it harshly.

‘Does it matter?’ Hongjoong cut in. ‘We’re here now. We can only keep doing what we’re doing.’ He looked back down to the map. ‘Try to work it out.’ The map and the compass were clues, just as the evidence of their eyes and ears were clues.

He just didn’t want to think about where those clues were leading.

***

After they’d cleaned up their breakfast things, they kept on walking. The coast remained wild and uninhabited – no houses near the beach, no powerlines, no boats in the sea or planes overhead. Nothing, even as the day wore on.

‘How long is the Korean coastline?’ Yeosang said. He was wearing his jacket as a sun cover. ‘You’d think we would have found somewhere by now.’

‘Maybe we’re in China,’ Mingi said. ‘We coulda got blown off course while we were asleep.’

‘We weren’t on a sailboat,’ Seonghwa said.

‘Drifted off course,’ Mingi said, ‘on the currents.’

‘Better than if we’d landed in North Korea,’ San said. ‘Imagine if we caused an incident.’

‘It wouldn’t be our fault,’ Mingi said. ‘It’s not like we kidnapped ourselves. Unless we time travelled from the future.’

‘What, we got kidnapped by our future selves?’ Wooyoung asked.

‘Yup. And now we’ve been sent back to the distant past. Pre-human. Gonna see a dinosaur any minute now.’

‘At least that would make this worthwhile,’ Hongjoong said.

No dinosaurs eventuated. They did see an extremely large dragonfly, which landed on Yunho’s collarbone and looked extremely charming – at least until it bit him. Yunho yelped and slapped it away. It flew towards Mingi instead, who flailed at it.

‘Oh wow,’ Yeosang said, looking at Yunho. ‘It drew blood.’

‘What!’ Mingi managed to hit the dragonfly, knocking it to the ground, and he backed behind Seonghwa. They all watched as the dragonfly twitched its wings and tried to right itself. Failed.

‘It didn’t really draw blood,’ Yunho said, touching the welt that had been raised on his skin. ‘I didn’t think dragonflies could bite. That was a surprise.’

Yeosang crouched down to look at the insect more closely. It was almost grotesque, when you looked at its features up close.

‘Don’t touch it,’ Mingi said.

‘I’m not going to touch it,’ Yeosang said.

Jongho found a stick to poke it with, trying to flip it over onto its right side. ‘Poor dragonfly,’ he said. ‘It didn’t deserve to get attacked by Mingi.’

‘It bit someone!’

‘Just for the small crime of biting Yunho.’

Even on its feet, the dragonfly didn’t seem like it would be going anywhere. Jongho sighed, and dropped the stick.

‘Maybe we should bring it with us,’ Yeosang said. He did pick it up then, holding it by the abdomen. ‘In case anyone needs a snack.’ He flew the dragonfly through the air until Seonghwa caught his eye and he looked abashed.

‘I’m not eating any insects,’ Mingi said.

‘You’re not eating any insects _yet_ ,’ Jongho said.

***

The shoreline got rockier the further south they got. Eventually they decided to call it a day, on the banks of another river – there was still no sign of any other people, and they’d need the daylight to find food again. There was less enthusiasm for the task than there had been in the morning – all the getting nowhere had drained them.

‘I’m gonna make a sign,’ Mingi said. ‘In case any helicopters go ahead.’

‘There aren’t even any birds,’ Wooyoung said. ‘Why would there be helicopters?’

‘Because they’re looking for us.’

‘I don’t think we’ll be seeing any helicopters,’ Jongho said glumly.

Mingi was grabbing rocks to write his message on the beach. ‘Well, maybe we’re wrong,’ he said.

‘I want to look up the hill a bit,’ Yeosang said. ‘See what we can see.’ He caught Yunho’s eye, and Yunho nodded. 

‘Okay, you guys scout it out,’ Hongjoong said. ‘If everyone else wants to look for food, that’d be great. And I’ll boil some water.’

They split up, and Yeosang and Yunho headed up the hill together with Jongho.

‘I was thinking we’d be able to see more from the top,’ Yeosang explained. ‘There could be a road on the other side and we’d never know.’

‘Do you think we’ll be able to see?’ Jongho said, looking at the tight-packed bush around them. ‘We might have to climb a tree.’

‘That’s why Yunho’s here,’ Yeosang said. Yunho elbowed him, which he accepted with good grace.

There were no birds, but they saw several of the massive dragonflies again. They didn’t seem either attracted to people or shy of them.

‘That one before probably just assumed you were another tree,’ Jongho said.

‘I don’t think dragonflies eat trees,’ Yeosang said.

Yunho wasn’t thinking about dragonflies any more. ‘Hey, are those persimmons?’ He gestured ahead of them, where the flash of orange had caught his eye. The tree had lost most of its leaves already, but was heavy with fruit.

‘That’s better than a view,’ Jongho said.

It was a tall tree, but there were plenty of persimmons within reach, even if you weren’t Yunho. Jongho opened up his backpack and they piled the fruit inside.

‘Do you think it’s okay to just take it?’ Yeosang said. ‘I mean, I know we haven’t seen anyone around …’

‘If we get in trouble, then we’re also rescued,’ Yunho said.

‘I’m happy to take that chance,’ Jongho said. He reached out for one of the persimmons, and then dropped it suddenly. ‘Yuck,’ he said. ‘That one’s being eaten.’ He wiped his hand on his pants.

‘They must be good then,’ Yunho said. He plucked another persimmon and inspected it before he bit down. The fruit was sweet and soft. ‘Definitely ripe,’ he said. He was hungrier than he’d realised. ‘You two should try them.’

Distracted by persimmons, they didn’t notice at first the buzzing nearby.

‘Um, Jongho?’ Yunho said. ‘Stay cool, but do you maybe want to come over in this direction?’

‘What, why?’ Jongho was mid-bite, and he paused to look around. And then froze, face-to-face with a massive hornet. It was as big as a magpie.

‘Yeah, that,’ Yeosang said. He picked up Jongho’s bag and started to back away.

‘Okay,’ Jongho said. ‘No biggie. It’s just a hornet the size of my face.’ Slowly, he crouched down so that he could put the half-eaten persimmon on the ground, hoping that was what had caught the hornet’s attention.

‘There’s not just one,’ Yunho said. He was backing away too. He still had a persimmon in his hand, and now he threw it uphill as sharply as he could. Backed up a few steps more. ‘Come on!’

They ran back down the hill, crashing through the bush. The hornets, thankfully, were more interested in the fruit than in following after them, but the buzzing still rang in their ears the whole way down.

When they emerged onto the beach, Jongho collapsed on the sand and said, ‘Did you see that? If one of those stung you you’d probably be dead.’

‘I didn’t think hornets even got that large,’ Yunho said in agreement. He sat down with a thump next to Jongho, and looked out along the beach. They were some distance away from the others, but Seonghwa had seen them and waved. Yunho waved back.

‘At least we got the fruit,’ he said.

‘Yeah, but we weren’t much success as a scouting mission,’ Jongho said.

‘Well, we know which way not to go,’ Yeosang said. He began to walk up the beach to meet Seonghwa, and the others had to get up to follow him.

‘Did you see anything?’ Seonghwa asked. He was barefoot, with his pants rolled up from digging around in the half-tide.

‘We didn’t make it to the top,’ Yeosang said. ‘There were hornets. Jongho freaked out.’

‘I did not freak out!’ Jongho said.

‘He freaked out.’

‘We managed to get some permissions first though,’ Yunho said.

‘Oh, good,’ Seonghwa said faintly.

‘Better than just seafood again,’ Yeosang said.

‘Well, it’s probably more balanced.’

‘Yeosang wishes we’d found some chickens instead,’ Yunho said.

‘I don’t know if it would be the same,’ Yeosang said. ‘We don’t have anything to cook them in.’

‘I think one of those hornets could definitely have killed a chicken,’ Jongho said.

‘Probably eaten it too,’ Yunho agreed.

Seonghwa blinked at him, very quickly.

‘They were huge,’ Yeosang said, indicating the size with his hands. Seonghwa looked dubious.

‘We’re not joking!’ Yunho said. He looked over his shoulder at the hills. ‘We’re lucky we didn’t get stung.’

‘Even regular-sized hornets can kill people,’ Seonghwa said. He looked thoughtful. ‘We better be careful.’

***

While the persimmons did brighten things, it was a solemn evening. While Seonghwa cooked dinner, the others set about making shelter. There were enough fallen branches in the bush nearby that they could use them together with the tarpaulin and rope in their bags to make tents. It should have meant they felt more prepared for the evening, but the lack of rescue was wearing on them, and the adrenaline of their adventure had long worn off.

As the sun sank down over the hills and the air chilled, they found themselves moving closer to the fire.

‘What if we don’t find anything tomorrow either?’ Wooyoung asked.

‘We’ve got to,’ Hongjoong said. He bit his lip. ‘But even if we don’t, it’s okay, right? We’ve got what we need to survive. We’ve got each other.’

‘But someone planned all this,’ Mingi said. ‘They put the backpacks together because they knew we’d need all this stuff.’

‘Mingi’s right. There’s got to be a reason for it.’

‘No-one said anything?’ Jongho asked. He turned to Hongjoong. ‘Not even to you?’

Hongjoong thought back. It had been an ordinary practice day, the day before they were taken. 

‘The manager said we were going to have a hard time of it,’ he said. It was the sort of thing people said all the time, hardly worth remembering. ‘He said I had to look out for you all. That’s all.’

‘That’s nothing unusual,’ Wooyoung said.

‘Yeah,’ Mingi said, rubbing Hongjoong’s back, ‘you always do.’

Hongjoong closed his eyes, leaning back into Mingi’s touch.

‘Let me see those maps again,’ Yeosang said.

Hongjoong had left the case in his backpack; he took it out now and handed it to Yeosang. Yeosang took out the map of the country and sat closer to the fire to look at it. The crosses had to be a hint, he thought, about where they were meant to go.

‘What’s on the back?’ Seonghwa asked, touching the edge of the map.

Yeosang flipped the map over. There was a pattern, but none of them had looked at it closely. Yeosang looked at it now, with Seonghwa sitting over his shoulder.

Then Yeosang screwed up his face and collapsed back, startling Seonghwa.

‘Is there something?’ Hongjoong asked, looking more alert.

‘It’s a code,’ Yeosang said. They’d been left a coded message.


	3. Chapter 3

They spent the evening working out the code together – the symbols that were letters, and the patterns that were words. The map that was also a letter.

It said:

> Sorry to make things difficult for you. By the time you decode this letter, hopefully you’ve already realised something is wrong. Maybe that will make the shock easier.
> 
> The world as we know it is ending. Once you read this – if you read this – the rest of us will be long gone.

‘This has to be a joke,’ Wooyoung said.

‘It’s not funny,’ Mingi said.

> Don’t be mad. We did the best we could. Like we know you’ll do the best you can.

The world had ended, the letter said, not because of global warming or overpopulation or nuclear war, but the same way as the dinosaurs went: by asteroid strike. There was no cunning plan to deflect or destroy it – or maybe there had been and it had failed; the letter didn’t say. The project ATEEZ had been put into was a rather last-ditch one: take a number of young people, and put them in cryosleep. For years. For decades. Even centuries; until the readings said it was safe again for humans. And then they would wake up.

That was the hope, at least. One last hope.

They weren’t the only ones, of course – there were several groups in cryosleep, in different places across the country. And other countries had their own such projects.

Seonghwa was reading the letter aloud when San got up angrily.

‘There have to be cameras,’ he said. ‘This has to be someone messing with us. There’s no way –’

‘The time of year is wrong,’ Yunho said.

‘No birds,’ Mingi said.

San yelled, out towards the sea. And when he was done yelling, Wooyoung got up and hugged him from behind.

The crosses on the map were shelters. They should, the letter said, have everything they needed to start over. And there would be others, drawn to the same places, because of course you couldn’t start humanity over with one boy group (the letter didn’t say that part).

‘This isn’t what I signed up for,’ Seonghwa said. He stared at the letter, which was just patterns; it didn’t mean what they’d made it to mean.

‘Nothing we can do about it now,’ Yunho said.

‘If you’d asked me –’ Seonghwa hugged his knees. He tried to comprehend it. ‘If that’s really what happened … wouldn’t you rather be dead with everyone else?’

‘No,’ Hongjoong said, cutting him off. Seonghwa looked up at him, with wide eyes.

‘They believed in us,’ Hongjoong said. ‘That means we don’t get to give up.’

‘And that’s why Hongjoong does the pep talks,’ Jongho muttered.

The quiet seemed even more encompassing after that. It had gained a new meaning, representing a more absolute isolation.

They made their way to bed in dribs and drabs, as evening turned to night.

‘So there are others, right?’ Wooyoung said, lying next to San. ‘They can’t all be idol groups though. I mean, that’s nuts.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Like why wouldn’t you pick, I don’t know, scientists or builders or something. That would be more useful.’

‘Guess we got lucky.’

‘Maybe someone in the government’s an ATINY.’

San tried not to laugh. ‘Everything mysterious bureaucrats like,’ he said. ‘Not just teenagers.’

Wooyoung did laugh. ‘I mean, what even is the point of an idol group after the apocalypse? There’s no-one left to perform for.’

‘Maybe the insects like music.’

‘Maybe Mingi should have sung to the dragonfly instead of slapping it.’

San didn’t answer. He’d fallen asleep.

It was easier for some of them than others.

***

The next morning, they inspected the map again.

‘So if we accept what they’re saying,’ Hongjoong said, ‘then maybe the coastline has changed.’ He didn’t say, _since we were put to sleep_ , because of course that was only two nights ago. In his mind it was only two nights ago. ‘So we should assume this is where we started.’ He tapped their icon, then moved his finger inland and south, and paused. ‘I guess we can’t say how far we got. But if we want to get to one of these shelters, then this should be the closest.’ He circled the Palgongsan cross with his finger.

‘Is that what we want to do?’ Seonghwa asked. Hongjoong looked up at him, surprised by the question.

‘They said there will be supplies there, right?’ Yunho said. ‘And if there are other people left, then they’d be heading to the shetlers too, surely.’

Seonghwa looked dubious.

‘If we are in the future,’ Wooyoung said, ‘we don’t know what it will be like inland. That’s what you mean, right, hyung?’

‘I still don’t know if I can believe it,’ Jongho said. He folded his arms.

‘So we need to prove it first,’ Yeosang said. ‘I think we don’t head for the mountains just yet. We go to Pohang.’ The city should have been just down the coast from where they were.

It was also Yeosang’s hometown.

‘You think we’ll recognise it?’ Mingi asked.

‘I doubt the asteroid landed right on top of us,’ Yeosang said. ‘There’s gotta be some things left standing.’ He glanced over at Seonghwa. ‘Better?’

Seonghwa nodded.

‘Okay,’ Hongjoong said, ‘so we try that.’

‘Maybe we get lucky and the camera crew pick us up on the way,’ San mumbled.

Later, when they were packing up the camp, Wooyoung asked Yeosang, ‘Hey, are you really going to be okay with it?’

‘Okay with what?’ Yeosang was rolling the tarpaulin up, as tight as he could.

‘You know. Going home. If it’s gone.’

Yeosang shrugged. ‘It’s not like I can do anything about it.’ His hands were tense. ‘At least we’ll know. Maybe.’

‘Right.’ Wooyoung sat and looked at him, almost with admiration. ‘I don’t know if I’d want to see.’

‘Well, if I break down, I’ll be sure to cry on your shoulder.’

Wooyoung laughed. ‘I’d like to see that.’

***

It wasn’t like the approach to a city from the countryside should have been – there was no gradual build-up of houses, of people. It was only coming round the hillside and seeing the harbour laid out in front of them, and the city beneath it.

You could see them in the water still: the high rises. Great concrete blocks of them, no longer standing tall but drowned or tumbled, the waves wearing white at their edges.

Yeosang hadn’t realised they were so close. Hadn’t recognised the hills – he struggled to recognise them now, because the landscape was _wrong_. It was as if it had sunken beneath the water – but of course it hadn’t. It was the water that had come up to meet the city, and there had been no-one to stop it.

They couldn’t deny it now – that the letter had told the truth. That everyone was gone. The city, their old lives … that all of it was gone.

When Wooyung put his hand on Yeosang’s shoulder, Yeosang almost jumped out his skin – but Wooyoung looked as spooked as he did.

Hongjoong cleared his throat. ‘We don’t have to keep going,’ he said.

Because what would be the point? Home was gone. The whole world. Their families. Their friends. Everyone they ever knew.

‘Where can we go?’ Yeosang said. ‘There’s nowhere to go.’

‘I guess we can’t deny it now,’ Jongho said. He looked suddenly ill, and he cursed, and sat down, there on the dirt.

Yeosang met Seonghwa’s eyes. Seonghwa pulled a face, and looked out again at the drowned city.

‘I guess we go to the shelter,’ Yeosang said.

At least it was a goal.

‘We know where we are now though, right?’ Mingi said. ‘That’s more than we knew before.’

‘Some comfort,’ Wooyoung said.

‘No, it’s better to know,’ Yeosang said. ‘It’s just –’ He crouched down too.

‘It’s already late,’ Yunho said. ‘We don’t need to go any further today.’

‘We don’t need to go any further ever,’ Jongho said. His voice had a dreamy quality to it. ‘Or do anything.’

‘Well, we do need to eat,’ Mingi said. ‘I want to try fishing.’ The hooks and line were one of the things that had been left to them. All those practical items that should have been a warning.

‘Fine,’ Jongho said. ‘That’s almost the same as doing nothing.’ He sat up straight again.

‘Alright,’ Hongjoong said. ‘After we find somewhere to make camp.’

***

With all the hills, it wasn’t hard to find water, at least. San didn’t bother waiting to boil it – he drank straight from the stream, dipping his hands into the water as a cup.

‘I still think you should boil it,’ Seonghwa said, dropping his backpack down next to San and sitting on it.

‘Yeah,’ Wooyoung said, ‘something might have died upstream. It’s better to find a spring or something.’

‘Would you even know what a spring looked like?’ San said.

Wooyoung frowned. ‘Like a stream but it comes from underground.’

‘Well,’ Seonghwa said, ‘if San gets sick, we’ll all know not to drink the water without boiling it.’

‘I might check further up the hills while it’s still light,’ Yeosang said.

Hongjoong looked up worriedly. ‘Well, don’t go alone,’ he said. He cast his eyes about the group.

‘I’ll come too,’ Yunho said. ‘Maybe we’ll find something good again.’

‘Just don’t lead any hornets back here,’ Jongho said.

Yeosang waved a hand dismissively as he walked away from the campsite, and Yunho had to hurry after him.

Yeosang was just walking, not paying attention to his surroundings. Yunho tried to keep pace, and to mark the trail as they went.

‘Slow down,’ he said at last. ‘We’re not going to find anything like this.’

Yeosang stopped walking altogether. He dropped into a crouch on the forest floor.

‘You know that’s not why I came out here,’ Yeosang said, his voice half hidden by his posture.

Yunho sat down beside him on the dry leaf litter. It hadn’t rained since their arrival. Maybe it didn’t rain much now at all.

‘I know,’ Yunho said.

‘It’s everyone,’ Yeosang said. ‘Not just ...’ He shook his head. ‘They’re all gone. What the hell are we still doing here?’

‘I know,’ Yunho said again. Yeosang looked up at him then, from over his folded arms. ‘It’s crazy.’

Yeosang looked at him. Yunho tried not to shy away from the look in his eyes or to burst into tears himself.

‘You’re meant to be the upbeat one,’ Yeosang said.

‘I am being upbeat,’ Yunho said, ‘given the situation.’

Yeosang leant forward on his knees, and he wiped a hand across Yunho’s cheeks.

‘Oh,’ Yunho said. ‘Dammit. I was trying to be cool.’

Yeosang laughed. ‘You’re not cool,’ he said. He sat back, and looked up through the canopy at the sky, and sighed. ‘I know we’re all in the same boat. It’s just … seeing it, you know?’

‘Yeah.’ Yunho dabbed at his eyes again. Then a movement caught his attention from across the forest floor. ‘Oh hey,’ he said, in a whisper. ‘Don’t make any big moves.’

Yeosang looked where he was looking. There was a small animal like a rabbit, with pale fur, digging in the leaf litter. Yeosang looked back at Yunho.

Yunho was lifting himself up into a crouch, moving slowly so not as to alarm the creature.

‘What, do you think it will let you pet it?’ Yeosang said. He spoke softly, although the creature obviously wasn’t bothered by human voices.

Yunho shook his head. He reached back to where he’d strapped his knife to his backpack.

Yeosang’s eyes went wide. But obviously it was necessary if they ever wanted to eat meat again. He shifted back, to move out of Yunho’s way.

Yunho had gone very silent, tears forgotten. He moved up toward the creature, placing each foot with care.

The creature twitched an ear.

The next part happened very fast – when Yunho grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and moved the knife in almost the same motion, slicing into the creature’s neck. And then he startled, hot blood on his hands and the creature dropped on the forest floor.

The creature kicked its legs once, then fell limp.

Yunho dropped his knife beside it, and stared down.

‘Did you see that?’ he said.

‘I saw.’

‘I just …’

‘Yeah, wow,’ Yeosang said. He moved closer to Yunho, almost as cautiously as Yunho had approached his prey.

Yunho looked back and met his eyes. Yeosang tried to look as if there was nothing strange in the situation at all. Yunho had moved _so fast_.

‘It should be good to eat, right?’ Yunho said. His voice was a little strained.

‘Sure,’ Yeosang said. It looked pathetic, lying there with all its blood leaked out. Not a lot of meat on it, but Yeosang could already imagine it cooked. And he was hungry.

A scuffling noise startled them both; there was another one of the creatures, a larger one. Closer to a hare than a rabbit – but hares didn’t have teeth that sharp.

‘I think you killed its baby,’ Yeosang said.

‘Shut up.’ Yunho groped for the knife again, then he held it out in front of him. As if the creature could recognise it and would back off. ‘Go away.’

‘You don’t wanna get that one too?’ Yeosang had left his own knife inside his bag, which seemed like a mistake now.

Yunho didn’t answer.

There was a squeak behind them – one of the little ones.They were between it and its mother.

The mother bared her teeth. Yunho gritted his, and when the creature darted toward him, he sliced out toward it. He missed, and the creature sunk its teeth into his arm, its body dragging heavy.

Yunho let out a yelp, and fell back. Yeosang scrambled to act, grabbing the creature by its side and then its neck, trying to yank it away. But it didn’t want to let go.

‘Ow ow ow ow,’ Yunho was saying. He’d dropped his knife in the shock.

Yeosang had his hands full with the creature, grabbing it round the jaw until it was forced to let go. Then Yunho scrabbled back, groping for the knife, and Yeosang broke the creature’s neck.

It was easier than he’d expected. Just that sick snapping sound, and the thing was dead. Yeosang’s heart was beating faster than ever, and he and Yunho were both breathing heavily, from adrenaline or fear.

Yeosang saw how Yunho’s arm was bleeding, and he dropped the creature. ‘Are you okay?’ He moved automatically toward Yunho then.

‘Um,’ Yunho said.

Yeosang dithered a moment, and then he slipped his overshirt off, and used it to wrap Yunho’s forearm. Yunho let him, too much in shock to resist or help.

‘That thing was vicious,’ Yeosang said. It freaked him out, Yunho being so quiet.

‘Well, we did just kill its baby,’ Yunho said. His voice was strained.

‘Sorry,’ Yeosang said, tying off the shirt tightly.

‘No,’ Yunho said, ‘it’s fine.’

‘Is it?’

‘Not really; it hurts like a bitch.’

Yeosang laughed, his nerves fraught. He looked around them. The other baby rabbit was still there, twitching its nose and not knowing what to do with itself.

Yeosang picked up Yunho’s knife, and then he went and slit that one’s throat too. He wondered, as he did so, if it were entirely necessary. Just because the blood was still pumping in his ears …

‘Well, we won’t go hungry tonight,’ Yunho said, trying to sound cheerful. He looked pale, but Yeosang thought it was just from the fright; he wasn’t bleeding through the makeshift bandage.

‘The others will be pleased,’ Yeosang said. He wiped Yunho’s knife on the little creature’s fur, and handed it back to Yunho.

‘I don’t know about that,’ Yunho said. ‘I think I’m going to get told off.’

A flicker of a smile passed over Yeosang’s face. ‘Probably.’

***

‘What happened to you!’ San jumped up when he saw Yunho and Yeosang come back down from the hills. Yunho’s wound had bled through the bandage, and he held it up close to his chest, hand pressed tight over the wound.

‘An evil rabbit attacked us,’ Yunho said. San stared at him with wide eyes. ‘It’s not that bad,’ Yunho said weakly, even though it was.

Yeosang’s string of rabbits of secondary interest to Yunho’s injury; everyone gathered round and made a fuss.

‘Let them sit down,’ Seonghwa said, when it became too much. He frowned at Yunho’s arm. ‘We’ll have to bandage that properly. Can someone get the first aid kit from my bag?’

‘I’ve got it,’ Mingi said.

Yunho sat down, and Seonghwa crouched beside him. ‘Can I undo this?’ he asked.

‘I guess,’ Yunho said. He winced as Seonghwa unwrapped the bandage; the blood had gone tacky enough that it stuck. And when he saw the bite, he grew pale. It looked nasty, the way the rabbit’s teeth had dug into the skin.

‘We’ll need to wash it,’ Seonghwa said. ‘But _not_ with water straight from the stream.’

‘I can boil it,’ San said, as if to make up for his previous misdemeanour.

Seonghwa wrapped the fabric back around Yunho’s arm in the meantime. ‘This will need washing in cold water though,’ he said, ‘or the blood will set.’ He was speaking on autopilot.

‘Trust Seonghwa to think about laundry,’ Wooyoung said. He wasn’t very cutting though, and Seonghwa didn’t bother to respond.

‘Do you think the bite went very deep?’ he asked Yunho.

‘I don’t know,’ Yunho said. ‘I had my mind on other things.’

‘Right. Sorry.’ Seonghwa sat back on his heels; it wasn’t like there was much he could do before the water was boiled and cooled. The first aid kit didn’t extend to painkillers or antiseptics.

‘What do we do with these?’ Jongho asked, picking up one of the rabbits. 

‘Skin them. Gut them,’ Yeosang said.

Jongho made a face. ‘Any volunteers?’

‘I’ll try it,’ Wooyoung said.

‘Really?’

That process ended up being messier than expected. After Wooyoung ruined one of the creatures with a misplaced cut near the belly, Seonghwa ordered them to the other side of the stream.

The other two rabbits were butchered more successfully, and they started arguing over how to cook them – as if they had much in the way of options. Meanwhile, Seonghwa waited for the water to cool enough that he could clean Yunho’s wound.

‘I hope my tetanus shots are still valid,’ Yunho said, ‘after however many years.’ He tried to laugh; Seonghwa didn’t.

‘I don’t know,’ Seonghwa said. ‘I don’t even understand how they kept us alive till now.’

‘You’d think they would’ve picked that type of people for this, wouldn’t you? People who knew about any of this.’ He tried not to react too much, as Seonghwa wiped at the caked-on blood. ‘I guess we haven’t got any antibiotics if it gets infected, huh.’

‘No,’ Seonghwa said. ‘No doctors, no antibiotics.’

‘Ah well. Our ancestors survived this long, didn’t they?’

Seonghwa didn’t meet his eyes.

‘Or not. They survived long enough for us to be here.’

Having done his best to clean the bite, Seonghwa covered Yunho’s arm with the gauze that their first-aid kits had supplied, and he wrapped it with a clean bandage. It had bled again, but nothing too scary.

‘How does it feel?’ Seonghwa asked. ‘Not too tight?’

‘It’s good,’ Yunho said, lifting his arm and making a fist. ‘I mean, I really miss painkillers right now, but what can you do?’

Seonghwa smiled a tight smile.

‘It’s fine. But those rabbit things better taste good after all this.’

Yunho got to his feet, and took a moment to assure himself that he wasn’t about to keel over.

‘You should take it easy,’ Seonghwa said.

‘Sure. I just need to apologise to Yeosang for bleeding all over his shirt.’

‘What about my shirt?’ Yeosang had gone over the stream to help with the meat, but he waded back across now. ‘Is your arm okay?’

‘Seonghwa did a good job,’ Yunho said, which wasn’t strictly an answer. ‘Sorry about the shirt though.’

‘Better to ruin the shirt than have you bleed to death,’ Yeosang said.

‘It’s not the only thing that needs washing,’ Seonghwa said. He’d begun to put the first aid supplies back, packing them with care.

Yeosang and Yunho looked at each other. Yeosang had blood on his pants, and Yunho on his shirt, and who knew what was from the rabbits and what was from Yunho.

‘I think,’ Yunho said, ‘that we better learn to use ranged weapons.’


	4. Chapter 4

Seonghwa woke in the night to the sound of rain. It was completely dark outside – no light from the sky, no reflection from the waves, just black, and the smell of the rain, the thrum of it against the tarpaulin. 

When he touched the roof of the tent, the water pulled through the material and onto his fingertips.

He couldn’t get back to sleep. It had taken him so long to fall asleep in the first place, and he had to start all over again – except now he got to ruminate on the flimsiness of their tents. And how if they ever wanted to live within four walls again, they would have to build them. And he knew nothing about building and who was there to teach them anyway? No-one. Only the eight of them; he couldn’t have said for sure there was a single other person alive in the world.

Usually Seonghwa found it reassuring to sleep beside another person; tonight, he was too aware that he and Hongjoong could have been a quarter of the entire human population.

The rain eased after a time, but the ends of the sleeping bag got damp. Seonghwa tried to make himself smaller; he couldn’t really.

‘Why’re you awake?’ Hongjoong’s voice was a mumble. Seonghwa hadn’t meant to wake him.

‘It rained,’ Seonghwa said.

‘Mm. Rain’s okay if we’re not in it.’

It was an astonishment to Seonghwa, how unconcerned he sounded.

‘Go back to sleep,’ Hongjoong said. ‘We’ll have to move again tomorrow.’

‘To the shelter.’ _Shelter_ sounded good to Seonghwa right now. ‘That’s more than a day away, though.’

‘Yeah. But what else can we do?’

Nothing. There was nothing else left.

***

In the morning, Yeosang asked Hongjoong for the maps. This time, he was looking for the regional maps – he flicked through them until he found Pohang, and he pulled that one out.

‘Can I draw on this?’ he asked.

‘You know those are tall we’ve got,’ Hongjoong said.

‘They’re not accurate though.’ Yeosang looked between the map and the landscape. There was a peninsula there that should have been a hill; he traced the outline of it on the map with his finger. ‘We know the sea’s come up this far, right? So we should be able to use the contour lines to work out where the coast should be –’

‘That’s crazy,’ Hongjoong said, looking where Yeosang had indicated. ‘How can it have risen so much?’

Yeosang shrugged. ‘At least we can say it probably wasn’t all caused by humans. So can I use the maps?’

‘Sure.’ Hongjoong stepped back. ‘I guess if we’re going to go to Palgongsan, we should know if we might need the life rafts again.’

Yeosang set about updating the map – drawing the new lines with more confidence than he felt – while the others did their best to prepare for the trip inland. While they knew now there were animals about, and fruit, the bush seemed a less certain food supply than the sea. Or maybe it was just a more dangerous one.

As Yeosang began to see the new shoreline on the map, he began to feel more relaxed about their impending journey. There were enough landmarks between here and there that he thought they could make their way without getting lost. That was of course assuming the landscape hadn’t changed apart from the sea having risen. That wasn’t probably something they should take for granted.

But they also wouldn’t know until they tried.

Once he’d done the maps relevant to their trip, Yeosang went to check on Yunho. Yunho was meant to be resting, but instead he was attempting to dry the leftover persimmons, laying them in neat rows beside the fire.

‘How’s your arm?’ Yeosang asked. He accepted a piece of persimmon from Yunho and sat down beside him. The taste was startlingly sweet when you were hungry.

‘It’s okay,’ Yunho said. ‘It hasn’t bled through again this morning.’

‘That’s a pretty low bar to clear.’

Yunho pulled a face. ‘We woke up at a good time for fruit,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘Imagine if it had been winter.

‘Yeah.’

‘I guess there will be supplies and things at the shelter.’ Yunho finished another piece of persimmon. ‘Like … seeds.’

‘And instructions on planting them.’

Yunho laughed. ‘All that time spent practicing, and we have to become gardeners.’

‘They should have chosen horticulture students.’

‘Horticulture students. Doctors.’ Yunho lifted his arm.

Yeosang didn’t have a response to that.

Yunho sighed, and laid back on the ground. ‘It’s not so bad,’ he said.

‘No?’

Yunho had his eyes closed. ‘I mean, apart from the rest of the world being dead. But it’s not like we really know what happened. Maybe they survived the asteroid and lived long, happy lives, and it was the next generation that died out.’

Yeosang laughed, softly.

‘I guess they would have woken us up then, though.’ Yunho opened his eyes to meet Yeosang’s, and he smiled.

Yeosang couldn’t hold his gaze. He looked out toward the sea, and then looked back with a start, because Yunho was, without making a sound, crying.

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘It’s okay.’

Yunho shook his head.

Yeosang looked around for the others, freaked out, but no-one was paying them any attention. It was just the two of them.

He shuffled closer to Yunho. ‘At least we’re still together,’ he said. ‘The eight of us.’ It wasn’t as if they’d chosen each other – but still, they were who they had to rely on. Maybe they’d never been alone before, but it was still down to them in the end.

‘Imagine if they’d done some kind of vote to choose people.’

‘What, like a project group?’

Yunho giggled, and covered his eyes. ‘I don’t know if you’d want to win or not.’

Yeosang wanted to say _of course not_ , but then, he couldn’t really be sorry not to be dead. Whatever the circumstances, it was better to survive. 

They had to believe that.

***

The next day, they began the walk inland. It started to rain again, as they packed up, and while their jackets helped at first, the rain was consistent. It didn’t matter that it was only drizzle when you were in it for hours. Even things like checking the map became difficult – they had to huddle over it, shielding it with their bodies.

As they walked further into the hills, occasionally they would see animals – the small rabbit-like creatures, or larger, less mammalian ones. Those they were grateful not to be seeing too close.

In the afternoon, Yunho began to lag.

‘Maybe we should take a break,’ San said. Yunho had gone pale, and the damp on his brow could have been sweat as well as rain. ‘We can try and find some lunch.’

‘In this rain?’ Mingi asked, whacking at the bushes with a branch he’d picked up.

‘We can put the tarp up,’ San said. He didn’t want to draw attention to Yunho struggling, but he couldn’t help worrying for him.

‘Let’s try to get to the river at least,’ Hongjoong said, ‘and we can get some more water.’

‘I don’t think we need more water,’ Jongho said glumly.

They kept on going. The route was downhill at this point, but that wasn’t much of a relief – the rain made things slippery, and Yunho’s steps were already less sure.

It was a relief, then, when they came across the river – the sound of it first, and then, after they sped up, the sight.

It was a narrow river, but it was a relief not to be fording it right away. They found a flat area instead, where they could hang the tarpaulin between the trees to make some shelter.

‘You sit down,’ San told Yunho.

‘I’m okay,’ Yunho said, letting San steer him. ‘Just need to rest.’ But he wasn’t breathing easily, and San fussed at him, laying a hand against his forehead.

‘You’re not okay,’ San said. ‘You’ve got a fever.’

‘I’m okay.’

‘He needs to dry off,’ Seonghwa said. He made for Yunho’s bag, getting a nod from him before he began to rummage for a change of clothes. But they were damp too.

‘No better, huh?’ Yunho said, when Seonghwa frowned.

Seonghwa shook his head.

Yunho looked past him then, out toward the river, his eyes unfocused. ‘What a lot of rain,’ he said.

Seonghwa frowned deeper, and switched to his own pack. He’d given more thought to the possible weather, and had wrapped his clothes in the tarpaulin.

‘Wear these,’ he said, offering them out to Yunho. ‘I’ll try and get the rest dry.’

Wooyoung had built a fire, and he tried to construct a clotheshorse that they could stand next to it. They all found their own tasks – making dinner, or collecting water, or getting their damp things together – but they kept an eye on Yunho too. 

Once Yunho had changed into dry clothes, Seonghwa insisted on checking his arm.

Under the bandage, the bite marks were red and hot.

‘Guess those critters were more dangerous than we thought, huh?’ Yunho said. Seonghwa didn’t seem to register his joking tone, and rocked back on his heels.

‘I don’t have anything I can give you,’ Seonghwa said.

‘We’ll just have to keep him warm,’ Hongjoong said, ‘and hydrated, and …’ There wasn’t much else they could do.

‘Are you hungry?’ San asked, and he offered Yunho one of the dried persimmons.

Yunho wasn’t, particularly, but everyone was watching him and so he took it anyway, and he ate it, and he took Yeosang’s water bottle when Yeosang offered him that.

‘I feel like there should be herbs or something that would help,’ Mingi said. He shook his head. ‘I don’t know anything about herbs.’

‘It’s probably better not to mess with things like that,’ Hongjoong said. ‘Yunho’s healthy.’ He turned back to addressing him. ‘You just need to rest up,’ he said.

‘Yes, boss,’ Yunho said. It wasn’t as if he had any other options.

***

Seonghwa pulled Hongjoong aside later. ‘Yunho’s wound doesn’t look good,’ he said.

‘I know,’ Hongjoong said. He looked more tired saying that than he had at any point before. ‘We can’t do much about it.’

‘We don’t have any medicine,’ Seonghwa said, ‘but there might be some at the shelter. It’s meant to have supplies, right?’

‘Yeah, but we don’t know what that means,’ Hongjoong said. If there were medicines there, would they even still work? But it wasn’t as if they had much to lose by checking. ‘Are you thinking some of us go ahead?’ There was no way they’d be moving Yunho, if he had a fever.

‘If there’s nothing there,’ Seonghwa said, ‘it’s not like Yunho’s worse off. But if there is –’

‘You’re right,’ Hongjoong said. ‘I don’t like to split us up though. If anything happened to the rest of you …’

Seonghwa waited.

‘You’re right,’ Hongjoong said again. He looked out at the rain falling. ‘Do you want to go, or stay here? You’re probably better with this sort of thing than I am.’ That one of them would stay and one would go went without saying.

‘I _want_ to go,’ Seonghwa said, ‘but I think you’d better.’ 

Hongjoong nodded. ‘We shouldn’t wait around then,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to the others. See who wants to do what.’ It was still barely afternoon – there was time to get further by night.

Yunho was dozing, when Hongjoong gathered them together. It felt serious – talking about Yunho when he couldn’t take part. It felt wrong.

‘So what’s up?’ Jongho asked. His eyes flicked to Yunho.

‘We don’t think we can wait around and hope Yunho gets better,’ Hongjoong said. He looked at Seonghwa, who gave a small nod. ‘If we can get to the shelter, there’s got to be medical supplies there. Maybe that includes antibiotics. If it does, we need them sooner rather than later.’

‘But Yunho can’t travel,’ San said.

Hongjoong nodded. ‘That’s why we’ll have to split up.’

‘What?’

‘We can’t split up,’ Wooyoung protested, but he too looked at Yunho. ‘I mean, we don’t even know these shelters are real.’

‘We’ve got to assume they are,’ Hongjoong said, folding his arms. ‘I don’t like it either, but …’

‘I’ll go,’ Yeosang said. The others looked at him, startled. ‘It’s better than waiting around. We should leave right away, right?’

Hongjoong nodded.

‘I’ll go too,’ Jongho said.

‘I want to stay with Yunho,’ San said, in a quiet voice.

‘That’s fine,’ Hongjoong said. ‘Seonghwa will stay as well.’ He looked at Yeosang and Jongho. ‘Three people is probably enough.’

Mingi and Wooyoung didn’t argue.

‘Alright,’ Hongjoong said. ‘Yeosang, you’ve still got the maps, right?’

‘Sure.’

They repacked. Having made the decision, there wasn’t much point waiting around. Yunho was sick, but there maybe _was_ still something they could do about it.

‘I don’t know how fast we can get there,’ Hongjoong said to Seonghwa. He didn’t say, _if_ they could get there – they were trying to navigate off an old map, after all, and anything could happen between here and there. He didn’t need to point that out.

‘If it takes too long,’ Seonghwa said, ‘you can turn around.’

‘But how long is too long?’

They looked over at Yunho, who slept uneasily.

‘I don’t know,’ Seonghwa admitted.

‘If we don’t get there within three days,’ Hongjoong said, ‘we’ll turn around.’

Seonghwa nodded. Even three days seemed too long; it wasn’t as if the return leg would go any faster. But they had to draw the line somewhere.

‘So if we’re not back within six days –’

‘We’ll come find you,’ Seonghwa said, in a tight voice. He didn’t look Hongjoong in the face, but Hongjoong clapped him on the shoulder, like he understood.

Because if it took that long, either Yunho would get better on his own or he wouldn’t. And if he didn’t ...

‘We’ll be back before then,’ Yeosang said, interrupting them. He’d put his rain jacket back on, although it was still damp, and he had his pack ready to go. ‘Try not to worry too much, hyung. Just take care of Yunho.’

‘Yeah, don’t worry about us,’ Hongjoong said. He smiled, as much for his own benefit as Seonghwa’s.

Seonghwa nodded. As if that were as much as he could do.

***

When Yunho woke up again, it was evening, and the others were gone. San was sitting beside him, carving at a stick with his knife. Yunho couldn’t tell if he was making something or just hacking at it for the sake of it.

‘Oh, Yunho! How are you feeling?’ he said, when he realised Yunho was awake. ‘Can I get you anything?’

Yunho sat up on his elbows. ‘Maybe some water,’ he said. He looked around the campsite. ‘Where is everyone?’

‘They’ve gone ahead,’ Wooyoung said. He brought over his drink bottle and offered it to Yunho. ‘You’re stuck with us, I’m afraid.’

‘They went ahead? Why?’

San and Wooyoung exchanged a look.

‘If we can’t bring you to the medical supplies, we’ll bring the medical supplies to you,’ Wooyoung said.

‘That’s …’

‘It’s what we decided!’ San said. ‘So you can just rest up.’

Yunho couldn’t argue with that. He drank Wooyoung’s water, ate a little, went back to sleep.

The night that followed was a miserable one. Yunho’s group was at least mostly dry, huddled together after one corner of the tarpaulin came down in the night. San slept curled against Yunho, close enough that he could feel the temperature Yunho was running. And Yunho kept dreaming and waking, dreaming and waking – the dreams too vivid and the waking not vivid enough.

For Hongjoong’s group, things weren’t even as pleasant as that. They walked as far as they could before it got dark, but the going was slow – it was hard to keep your footing when the ground was slippery with rain, and hard to navigate when the hills in front of you had disappeared in the grey.

It was a relief, when they found the lake they’d been aiming for. Hongjoong had been quietly terrified that they’d lose their way, that they wouldn’t be able to find their way back to the others. They’d be stuck wandering the mountains forever.

It didn’t bear thinking about.

They made camp by the lake and huddled in the one tent together to eat, and to examine the progress they’d made against the map. 

‘If the weather clears up, we should make better time,’ Hongjoong said. Impossible to tell though, what the terrain would actually be like. Or even how easy it would be to find the shelter once they got to Palgongsan. There was so much they didn’t know.

‘It will clear up,’ Yeosang said.

‘You think so?’

‘It can’t rain forever.’

And none of them wanted to think that such a thing as the weather might keep them from their goals.


	5. Chapter 5

In the morning, it was still raining. The river had swollen into a flood of silty brown water that came up closer to the campsite than any of them would have liked.

‘Even if we boil it,’ San said, ‘do you think it’s still okay?’ 

‘I don’t think I’d want to drink it,’ Wooyoung said. He was trying to get the fire going again, but it was hard when the wood was wet.

‘We could catch rainwater instead,’ Mingi said, ‘if we put the bowls out.’ He and Seonghwa were trying to retie the corner of the tarpaulin that had fallen down in the night.

‘At least if Hongjoong and the others get to the shelter they’ll be dry,’ Wooyoung said. As if they weren’t out in it at the moment.

‘They’ll have to turn around and come straight back though,’ San said. 

‘They’ll come back and they’ll all have colds,’ Wooyoung said. ‘We’ll be a field hospital, not a campsite.’

‘As long as we’re a well equipped field hospital,’ San said. He looked over at Yunho, who was still sleeping. He’d woken briefly when the others got up, but they’d told him not to get up. He was still feverish, and it was hard to tell if he were any worse or better than the day before.

‘It was nicer down by the beach,’ Mingi said. ‘We should just live down there.’

‘It was nice because it wasn’t raining,’ Wooyoung said.

‘No,’ Mingi said, ‘but it was easier to find food as well. I think humans are meant to live by the sea.’

‘I think we were meant to live in houses,’ Wooyoung said. He made a disgusted noise at the tinder that still refused to catch, and stood back up. ‘San, you try this.’

San crouched down by the fire pit, but he didn’t have any better luck than Wooyoung had. Seonghwa and Mingi each tried in turn, but the fire remained stubbornly unlit.

‘I guess we’re drinking rainwater,’ Mingi said, and he set the bowls out away from the tarpaulin.

Food was as much a concern as water, though – they’d given most of their supplies to Hongjoong and the others, and that meant they had to go hunting. Mingi and Wooyoung went out while San and Seonghwa stayed at the campsite. Seonghwa was setting the fishing line out – he didn’t know if there would be any fish around, given the turbidity of the water, but it seemed worth trying.

San sat beside Yunho, with the rope and some wood, and tried to deduce how one made a trap.

‘What are you doing?’ Yunho asked.

San jumped; he hadn’t realised Yunho had woken up.

‘Trying to make a trap,’ he said.

Yunho sat up to see better, although the movement made his head pound. ‘Where are the others?’ he asked.

‘Looking for food.’

‘You didn’t want to go too?’

San shook his head. ‘I have to stay and make sure you don’t cause trouble for Seonghwa.’

Yunho put on a ‘who me’ expression, and San jabbed him in the shoulder with his finger.

‘You’re probably thinking right now that you could get up and help with things,’ San said. ‘I’m here to make sure that you don’t.’

‘I’m not sure I need much discouragement at the moment,’ Yunho said weakly, and rubbed his shoulder where San had poked him. It hurt a surprising amount; but then everything about Yunho seemed to hurt right now. 

Still, staying awake and keeping San company seemed better than dozing the day away. And San at least didn’t expect much from him.

While San chattered to Yunho about nothing, Seonghwa kept an eye on the fishing lines. The river had pulled them taut, but Seonghwa noticed one of them jerk, as if it might have caught something.

He went to the river bank to take the pole – but when he stepped on the earth there, it crumbled beneath him.

It felt slow, as it was happening: the earth sliding beneath his feet, the long moment in which he called out, trying to grab hold of something, anything – the earth, the fishing line – but finding nothing solid, falling.

The water was a cold, nasty shock.

San and Yunho both startled to his yell; San dropped what he was working on, and he ran to the river’s edge, stopping short when he saw how it had given way. Seonghwa was there in the water, holding desperately onto a tree root to stop from being swept downstream.

‘Hold on!’ San said, and he crouched down at the river’s edge, reaching out with one hand until he could almost reach Seonghwa. He just needed to reach a little further –

He grabbed hold of Seonghwa’s hand and tumbled forward into the water; then they were both being dragged downstream.

The current was stronger than either of them would have guessed, and hard to swim against. It was as much as Seonghwa could do to keep hold of San’s hand, to try and keep his head above water.Sometimes he failed.

San was a stronger swimmer though, and that got them to the river’s edge, and maybe it was luck as well that he managed to grab hold of a tree branch there. The bark rasped at his hand; there was nothing gentle about it, but it meant that he could hold steady, and Seonghwa could get to the river bank, and they could both drag themselves from the water, coughing and sodden and miserable.

Seonghwa still felt like the river was running through his head; like it had given him a beating. He knelt on all fours, stuck there trying to catch his breath. San stumbled toward him and dropped to his knees beside him. Seonghwa didn’t look up.

‘Are you alright?’

Seonghwa could only shake his head, because he wasn’t alright.

The moment when he’d felt the strength of the current, he’d felt for sure that that was it; that he was lost to the river and it would keep him. But then he’d grabbed the tree root, and San had reached out for him – and then he’d been sure that it was both of them who were lost, only he thought San should be fine if only he’d been able to let go of his hand –

‘Hey,’ San said, ‘you’re okay.’ And he rubbed Seonghwa’s back, a little hesitantly; it was almost too much for Seonghwa, who was about to burst into tears. But it _was_ San, and he wasn’t expecting anything. So maybe it was okay.

Seonghwa calmed down. He pushed his wet hair back from his face, and he sat back – and then almost fell back when San grabbed him round the middle, because of course San was freaked out too. And he was trembling.

When San seemed to have relaxed a little, Seonghwa said, ‘Yunho must be worried.’

San nodded, but didn’t let go.

‘Are you okay?’ Seonghwa asked.

‘I thought we were gonna lose you.’

‘I’m here,’ Seonghwa said. ‘Thanks to you.’

San shivered, and that made Seonghwa colder too. ‘We have to get out these wet clothes,’ he said.

San nodded again, and this time he pulled back. He looked back up the river, but they couldn’t see the campsite from here.

‘I guess we better start walking,’ he said.

It was less walking at this point and more squelching. They hadn’t gone far before they saw Yunho ahead of them – hunched up in his rain jacket and looking wet-eyed and desperate. When Yunho saw them, he stopped short, and grabbed hold of the tree beside him like he thought he might fall over.

‘You guys,’ he said. ‘What’d you have to go and do that for?’

‘We didn’t do it on purpose,’ San said .He crossed the distance between them quickly, and he laid a hand on Yunho’s sleeve. ‘We’re okay now. Right, hyung?’

Seonghwa was starting to feel chilled, and distinctly less than alright, but he nodded.

‘Okay?’ San said. ‘Geez, you didn’t have to get wet too.’ He patted Yunho’s sleeve, so that the water fell off in drops.

‘I was worried,’ Yunho said. He was pale, but the colour was high in his cheeks. ‘You just went in after him! And you –’ he rounded on Seonghwa – ‘you need to be more careful.’

Seonghwa had thought he was careful. ‘We should get back,’ he said stiffly, and he started walking again. Yunho and San followed, and when Yunho stumbled, San took his weight.

Once they were back at the campsite, Yunho knelt down very suddenly, and then laid down on his side.

‘Yunho!’ San crouched down beside him.

‘I’m okay,’ Yunho said.

‘You’re not okay,’ San said. ‘You shouldn’t have come after us.’

Yunho had known that; but he hadn’t been able to stand seeing the two of them disappear. He couldn’t not have gone after them.

San made him get his rain jacket off, and then he opened up Yunho’s sleeping bag and laid it over him. Yunho pulled the sleeping bag closer in around his sides.

San looked up at Seonghwa, who was standing there shivering. ‘Hyung, you need to get changed.’

‘Yunho’s got my clothes.’

‘Then get in your sleeping bag,’ San said. ‘We don’t care if you’re naked.’

Seonghwa did as he was told. It was a relief to get out of the wet fabric, but even once he had the sleeping bag wrapped around him, he didn’t feel much warmer.

‘Should we make a fire?’ he asked.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ San said. He did still have a change of clothes, and he pulled them on now; then he took Seonghwa’s hand and dragged him over to Yunho. ‘Let’s just keep each other warm.’

It was the sort of statement that Yunho should have made a saucy comment about, but Yunho was hardly even awake at that point. Seonghwa laid a hand on his forehead, but Yunho pushed him away; Seonghwa didn’t know if it was that Yunho was so hot, or Seonghwa was so cold.

‘Lie down,’ San said, and nudged Seonghwa with his foot. He’d grabbed his own sleeping bag to make into a blanket.

‘Ground’s cold,’ Seonghwa said. When he said it, he thought that Yunho shouldn’t have been lying on it either. They weren’t very good at this camping business.

‘Then we’ll sit up,’ San said.

San eventually bullied them into position, Yunho too sick to protest, and Seonghwa feeling too had it. It was hard to think that it was only the morning. Still, once they were all snuggled up, Seonghwa thought that San had the right idea. Even though San had fallen in the river too, he was much warmer than Seonghwa was. And he didn’t seem to mind that Seonghwa was cold.

They were still curled up like that when Wooyoung and Mingi got back.

‘What’s this?’ Wooyoung said. ‘Don’t tell me you guys have been slacking off.’

Seonghwa turned his head away and pretended Wooyoung wasn’t there.

‘We weren’t slacking off!’ San said. He’d been dozing, but sat up straighter now. ‘We got wet.’

‘Amazing,’ Wooyoung said. He dropped his backpack on the ground, and he shook his head so that the water fell in droplets from his hair. ‘We got wet too.’

‘Why did you guys get wet?’ Mingi asked. He began to unpack his own bag, which was filled with pears and persimmons and nothing else.

‘We fell in the river,’ San said.

‘Hang on, what?’ Wooyoung said.

‘Well, Yunho didn’t fall in the river … just Seonghwa and me.’

Wooyoung stared at him, aghast.

The bank gave way,’ Seonghwa said, lifting his head reluctantly. ‘When I was checking the fishing lines. San tried to pull me out, but …’ He remembered, suddenly, that he wasn’t the only thing to have fallen in when the bank gave way. ‘We lost two of the fishing hooks.’

‘Well, that’s great,’ Wooyoung said.

‘We can make more,’ San said. ‘Like … out of bone or something.’

‘You know how to make fishing hooks out of bone?’ Wooyoung asked.

San scowled at him. ‘Well, not yet I don’t.’

Seonghwa didn’t want to listen to them argue. He turned his head away and shut his eyes. It didn’t matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t imagine himself to be back home. Couldn’t imagine the situation away.

‘The river’s pretty high,’ Mingi said. ‘You guys are lucky you made it out.’

Seonghwa opened his eyes again.

Mingi came over to poke Yunho in the cheek. ‘How’s this guy?’

Yunho shifted his head away from Mingi’s finger, but didn’t wake up.

‘He came to look for us,’ Seonghwa said.

‘ _Yunho_ ,’ Mingi intoned. When he poked him again, Yunho stirred enough to push his hand away.

‘We made him worry,’ San said. He chewed on his lip. ‘We got swept a fair way downstream.’

Wooyoung frowned, but he couldn’t really criticise them for having fallen in the river and almost drowning.

It had stopped raining at that point. Mingi managed to get the fire going again, although it didn’t matter for food – the two of them hadn’t managed to catch anything, so it was fruit for lunch and fruit for dinner.

Yunho woke enough to eat a little, and promptly fell asleep again.

‘He shouldn’t have been walking around,’ Wooyoung said, as if San and Seonghwa had any say in the matter.

It was just that he was worried.


	6. Chapter 6

The three women were out hunting when Bora made the signal to stop. She mouthed the question to the others, looking alarmed: _did you hear voices?_

They all listened. And there _were_ voices. Male voices – so it wasn’t that any of the other girls had followed them out.

‘They wouldn’t have come after us,’ Gahyeon said, keeping her voice hushed. ‘After all this time …’

Bora shook her head. If it had been the men from the group they’d left behind, they would have been more cautious, she thought. Still, there was something familiar about the voices ...

Yubin changed her grip on her spear, and tilted her head like a bird. ‘Do you want to hide? Or …’

Bora didn’t have to think about that. ‘I don’t want to hide,’ she said. She readied an arrow and led the approach.

They should have had the upper hand – they’d heard the other group before they were heard; they stepped quietly, and took advantage of cover.

Except that when they saw Hongjoong and the others, they were so surprised that they lost all sense of advantage. Gahyeon saw them first, and she had to cover her mouth so not to exclaim. Bora frowned at her, but then she caught sight of them and did her own double-take.

‘I’m not dreaming, right?’ Gahyeon said, her voice suddenly wobbly.

Bora set her jaw. She gave up her cover, and she strode into view before Yubin or Gahyeon could stop her.

The boys were surprised too; when Jongho saw the bow pointed at them, he put his hands up automatically in surrender.

‘What is this?’ Bora demanded.

They just stared at her.

Hongjoong said hesitantly, ‘Are we trespassing?’ As if there were any such thing any more.

Except that they’d been exiled, so maybe there was.

‘Unnie.’ Yubin came up behind her, and touched her on the shoulder.

Bora wondered what she must look like to them. Those boys … they were so _new_. The colour hadn’t even grown out their hair yet.

‘You’re not trespassing,’ Yubin said. ‘You surprised us. Unnie, do you really need to keep that up?’

She’d been aiming at Hongjoong. Like he was a danger to her, when all he was doing was standing there.

‘When did you wake up?’ Yubin asked. And something in the calm of her voice made Bora get hold of herself. She lowered her bow, resisting the way her body insisted they were under threat. She’d been surprised, that was all. That was what she told herself.

‘A week ago?’ Hongjoong said. He wasn’t sure which of the women to look at – while Bora wasn’t pointing the bow any more, she was still unnerving. But she wasn’t the one asking questions, and Yubin seemed safe to answer. ‘Wasn’t it the same for you?’

But it was clear that it wasn’t – the clothing the women wore looked old, worn out and repaired and re-worn; more than that, the women didn’t seem out of place in the bush. It was the way they’d come so suddenly out of nowhere; the confidence with which they held their weapons. It could have been too, that their hair and faces were undone, their skin tanned from days spent outside.

Yubin glanced at Gahyeon and Bora. Then, ‘Three years,’ she said. ‘It’s been three years.’

‘That long?’ Jongho said in shock, and he looked at Hongjoong for his reaction. But it was a shock to Hongjoong too. He’d only been thinking of the very immediate future. And the most immediate thing was ...

‘We’re trying to get to the Palgongsan shelter,’ Hongjoong said. ‘Do you know it?’

Yubin nodded.

‘Our friend … he was bitten, and the bite got infected. He needs antibiotics –’

‘The shelter won’t help with that,’ Bora said abruptly. She might as well have slapped him.

‘There’s no medicine like that any more,’ Gahyeon said, softening Bora’s response.

‘There’s not?’

‘There’s not.’

Hongjoong felt his heart squeeze. The thought that after they’d trekked all this way, left the others behind, they might not be able to do anything for Yunho after all?

‘Um,’ Gahyeon said, ‘maybe there’s something else …’

‘Who is it?’ Bora interrupted.

‘What?’ Hongjoong said. ‘I said, our friend –’

‘Yes,’ Bora said, ‘but who?’

‘Does it matter?’ Gahyeon asked.

‘I just want to –’ Bora cut herself off.

‘It’s Jeong Yunho,’ Yeosang said. ‘Do you … know us?’

Hongjong hadn’t thought of that. But he could see from the expression on Bora’s face that it was true.

‘You still look the same,’ Gahyeon said. Her voice was gentle, but there was a tight edge to it.

Bora turned abruptly, and she stalked away; Gahyeon called after her.

‘Let her go,’ Yubin said. She turned back to Hongjoong. ‘Look. We can’t help with the antibiotics, but you look like you’ve had it rough, and our village is near here, so ...’

‘I … we should get back.’

Jongho gave Hongjoong a funny look, then asked Yubin, ‘Have you got food?’

The women looked relieved by the question. ‘We can feed you,’ Gahyeon said.

‘Then I think we should stop a while,’ Jongho said. ‘Hyung, it’s not going to make a difference to Yunho now.’

Hongjoong knew that what he was saying made sense, but it still felt wrong to him.

‘We don’t have antibiotics,’ Gahyeon said, ‘but look … does he have a fever?’

Hongjoong nodded.

‘Maybe we can still help with that, then.’

‘We don’t know that stuff really does anything,’ Yubin said.

‘It can’t hurt.’ Gahyeon turned back to them. ‘I’m Lee Gahyeon. I know this isn’t ideal … but I’m glad to meet you.’

They made their introductions on the way back to the village. Bora kept ahead of the others – they would catch glimpses of her, but she didn’t want to talk.

Gahyeon talked. She explained to them about the herb she thought could help with the fever; then she got the story out about how Yunho had been injured. When Yubin heard it had been one of the rabbit creatures, she laughed sharply, and then schooled herself and apologised. There was something in her manner that meant no-one could be offended. It wasn’t that she was laughing at Yunho; it was just that this was what they had been reduced to. All of them. Scared of small animals.

And Bora, scared of people who had just woken up. Or scared for them.

The village wasn’t far from where the women had found them, in a spot where the hills opened up onto the flat. The trees had been cleared, and there were a number of low buildings built in an arc around a well.

Bora was speaking with another woman there now; they were all women, Hongjoong saw suddenly.

With that in mind, he looked at Gahyeon and Yubin again. Looked as if he could see back past the last three years. And he recognised them.

‘You’re Dreamcatcher, right?’ he said weakly.

‘Oh!’ Gahyeon said. ‘You do know us.’

‘You’ve changed,’ Hongjoong said.

‘Yeah, well, they didn’t send the stylists forward with us,’ Yubin said, her voice more grim than sardonic.

She was talking about people, of course. All the people who had died. All those people who had died while they’d been chosen to live.

Before they could say anything more, Bora brought the other woman to meet them. And the other woman clapped her hands to her mouth, seeing their faces. From her eyes, Hongjoong had the sick feeling that she wanted to cry.

Jongho started the second round of introductions. The new woman was Kim Minji, who had been JiU in another life.

‘But where are the rest of you?’ Minji asked. There was a worried look in her eyes, like she knew the feeling of counting your members to check that you were all there.

Hongjoong explained again, while Gahyeon went to look for the herb she’d mentioned.

‘I thought we could offer them a meal, at least,’ Yubin told Minji, when Hongjoong was done with his explanation. ‘They’ll want to get back soon anyway.’ She gave Hongjoong a nervous look.

‘I think we can do that much,’ Minji said. She smiled, but it was a jagged smile, like she was holding something back.

When they’d woken up on the ocean, they’d thought that finding people would mean getting rescued. Or after that, being welcomed. But judging from the pain on Minji’s face ...

‘Ah – we were told you woke up three years ago,’ he said. ‘You’re not … isn’t there anyone else?’

Minji’s expression froze. She looked at Bora.

‘There is,’ Minji said. She couldn’t manage the smile again. ‘We left them.’

‘You left?’ Hongjoong said. All the women had gone tense. ‘Why?’

It was a bad question, but he couldn’t take it back. The women were silent, not looking at him.

‘We had different opinions about what a society should be like,’ Bora said at last.

Minji shook herself, hearing Bora’s voice. ‘The others are further east,’ she said. ‘We came this way instead. You … you shouldn’t go there.’

‘They’re not all idol groups, are they?’ Jongho asked. Minji’s eyes widened, and then she laughed. She looked brighter when she laughed. ‘No way,’ she said. ‘Everyone there is much more useful than that.’

‘You look like you’ve managed,’ Hongjoong said, indicating the buildings around them.

‘We have,’ Minji said.

When Gahyeon arrived back, she had a concerned look on her face. ‘We don’t have any of the fever tea left,’ she said, making an apology with her hands.

‘You don’t?’ Hongjoong said. Even if it wasn’t proper medicine, he’d at least hoped they didn’t have to go back empty-handed.

Gahyeon shook her head. ‘It grows further in the forest,’ she said. ‘I can draw you a picture, tell you what to look for –’

‘Please,’ Hongjoong said. He rummaged in his backpack, until he found his notebook. He gave it to her with both hands. She tried to smile reassuringly, and it didn’t help Hongjoong’s feelings much.

Gahyeon sat on the lintel of one of the buildings, and began to sketch there, from memory.

‘You must know a lot more about this world than we do,’ Hongjoong said, turning back to the others.

‘It hasn’t been easy,’ Minji said. She brushed her hand against Bora’s.

‘They’re like babies,’ Bora said, in a mumble, like they weren’t meant to hear.

‘I’ll talk to Handong about the food,’ Yubin said. ‘You might want to leave sooner rather than later.’

Jongho looked wistfully at the buildings, with their four walls and roofs, but he didn’t say anything.

***

When they did eat, it was so good that they could have cried. After days of fruit and unseasoned meat, the meal was a revelation. Minji had to tell them to slow down, and not eat so quickly.

‘We don’t often eat rice,’ she said. ‘I guess it’s a special occasion.’

The shelter had, apparently, been stocked with seeds and instructions for everything – instructions for gardening and for harvesting; instructions for putting a building together, and for where to place the toilets. Guidebooks to plants and animals, which had proven of dubious use – Gahyeon, after finishing her illustration of the fever plant, had set to filling Hongjoong’s notebook with more plants to look out for, because they were useful or because they were dangerous – and she sat with Yeosang and talked him through them.

Hongjoong felt ill at ease, though. Jongho asked him quietly at one point, while the others weren’t attentive to them – ‘Shouldn’t we ask if we can come back here?’ – and Hongjoong had to shake his head. 

‘Another time,’ Hongjoong said. Not with the way Bora had run from them; not with the expression on Minji’s face when he’d asked if there weren’t other groups.

Maybe another time, it was something they could ask. But on that day, it wasn’t.

After they’d eaten, Minji got Hongjoong to take his maps out, and she annotated them carefully – with their own location, and with the location of the other groups.

‘Once you settle somewhere,’ Minji said, ‘you should let us know.’ She looked at the map as she spoke, and not at Hongjoong.

The rejection was explicit, then. Would they have to go to one of the other shelters? After the days they’d spent walking already, it seemed an overwhelming task.

Yubin saw the expression on his face, then. ‘We can lend them things, can’t we?’

Minji looked surprised, then, and she lifted her eyes. ‘Of course,’ she said, although she didn’t sound certain.

‘The important thing for now is to get back to Yunho and the others,’ Hongjoong said. ‘If we can find this plant –’

‘I’m sorry we didn’t have any,’ Gahyeon said. ‘I didn’t realise … I hope it makes a difference, anyway.’

They were being dismissed.

‘I can lead you back to the river,’ Yubin said, checking the map. ‘You should be alright from there. Gahyeon?’

‘I’ll come too,’ Gahyeon said.

It was awkward, farewelling the rest of them. Despite the food and the relief of seeing other faces, Hongjoong was glad to be going.

‘So,’ Jongho said, once they were out of earshot of the others, ‘are we allowed to ask what happened with the other group?’ He directed the question at Gahyeon, who had already proven herself more talkative than Yubin.

‘Um.’ Gahyeon ducked her head. ‘I don’t know if I should.’

‘Oh, go on,’ Yubin said. ‘It’s not like it’s a secret. _They_ know, after all.’

‘Well. It started because of how they treated us. We hadn’t been here that long, and … you probably know.’ Her face was serious. ‘They’re the type of people who got into good universities –’

‘You could’ve gone to a good university.’

‘– and they think that we’re useless. It doesn’t matter how hard you work, it’s just singing and dancing, right? Like that. They treated us like we weren’t good for anything. And ..’ Gahyeon folded her arms across her chest. ‘And we all thought, well, we’d just show them, right? We’d prove them wrong.’ She went quietly momentarily. ‘But that made things worse. That’s why we left.’

Yubin looked at Gahyeon skeptically. ‘Just say it,’ she said. When they turned to her, she went on. ‘Minji tried to poison their leader. Which he deserved; I’m not going to say he didn’t. But obviously we couldn’t stay after that.’

The boys didn’t know what to say.

‘Things had been bad for a while,’ Gahyeon said softly. ‘It wasn’t … no, you know what, Yubin’s right. He deserved it. Minji didn’t, but … anyway, you can see why she might be nervous of people.’

‘Okay,’ Jongho said, ‘I think I can say that’s not the answer we were expecting.’

‘How long ago was that?’ Hongjoong said.

‘Oh … summer before last? We wanted to get a long way away.’

‘Make of it what you like,’ Yubin said. ‘Whether you want to come back or not ...’

‘I hope you will,’ Gahyeon said. ‘It’s … it’s good to see other people again. I’m sure the others will think so too, once they stop freaking out.’

It was hard for Hongjoong to get his head around, but he didn’t think he was in any position to condemn them.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘When Yunho gets better …’ He couldn’t stand to think of it being _if_ , not _when_. He didn’t know what they’d do if Yunho didn’t get better.

Yubin and Gahyeon stopped them at the river; before they left, Gahyeon pressed a wrapped jar into Hongjoong’s hands. ‘Kimchi,’ she said. ‘So you eat properly.’

It was an unnecessary kindness, and for a minute Hongjoong thought that he didn’t want to leave. Still, they made their goodbyes, and Hongjoong and the others forded the river alone.

They were silent, for a while. No-one knew what to say: about the reason Dreamcatcher had left; about not having any sure help for Yunho, only the hope of finding some plant that might not even do anything.

‘I feel let down,’ Jongho said.

‘Oh?’

‘I thought finding people would make things easier. What have we got to show for it?’

‘People don’t always make things easier,’ Yeosang said. He’d put the notebook Gahyeon had filled out in his bag. He looked over at Hongjoong. ‘Do you think we will want to come back?’

Hongjoong was still thinking about it. ‘I think they know this world better than we do,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we should judge them too harshly.’

They kept on walking.

***

What’s wrong with me?’ Minji asked. It was just her and Siyeon, sitting in the doorway of the building. ‘They’re still hardly more than kids. Why couldn’t I tell them to come here?’

‘Because then we’d have to see them every day,’ Siyeon suggested.

‘We should be helping them …’

‘We did help them.’

‘They’ll probably go a long way away and not come back. And it’ll be my fault. They might even go to the others.’

‘This side of winter? I doubt it.’ Siyeon looked at the way Minji’s shoulders were hunched over, and she laid a hand on her back. ‘Hey. I don’t think the same thing would happen again.’

‘You think they’re good kids, right?’ Minji said. ‘I wanna believe that.’

Siyeon tilted her head back, and she looked up at the sky.

‘I think so,’ she said. ‘I think … it’s how we were, right?’

‘Before we were old and bitter, you mean?’

‘Well,’ Siyeon said, ‘some of us might be old.’ She laughed when Minji slapped her arm, then made herself serious again. ‘We can change our minds,’ she said. _We_ , as if it hadn’t been Minji’s decision on their behalf.

‘Maybe,’ Minji said. She squeezed her eyes shut. She hated being reminded of how they’d been when they first woke up. Whatever image it was they’d played with, they’d been innocent then. Minji had been innocent.

Siyeon bumped her shoulder, and Minji laid her head against her.

Maybe she wasn’t innocent now. But the other six had been willing to stand by her, when she’d taken that path.

Maybe those boys could survive this world without being scarred in the same way. Minji could hope that much.


	7. Chapter 7

Back by the riverside, Yunho had been drifting in and out of fever dreams for days. He dreamt he was there while the world was ending, and that was why it was so damn hot: it was the blast of the asteroid that destroyed everything. Or he would get chills, and he would be at the bottom of the ocean; he was stuck there and couldn’t get out the lifecraft; it was filling up with salt water and he couldn’t get out.

Or Seonghwa would wake him and he would be sure it was the _wrong_ Seonghwa: the one in black whose face was in shadow, and he would forget that was just a concept.

It wasn’t nice for Seonghwa, the way Yunho looked at him then, and shrunk away; shrunk back from Seonghwa trying to check his temperature or get him to drink the damn water that was the only good water they had because the river was still thick with silt.

Still, when Yunho did drink, he seemed to relax, and slipped back into sleep more peacefully. Seonghwa changed the dressing on the bandage then. They were quickly going through their supplies – they’d have to boil them clean, because they weren’t going to get any more.

And Yunho wasn’t getting better.

***

It was Wooyoung and San who went out to look for food that morning – Wooyoung had decided San and Seonghwa were too inclined to be gloomy if left alone together, even putting aside the whole falling in the river business. Wooyoung wasn’t going to get gloomy, and therefore it was better for at least one of them to be with him.

‘Oh look, there’s mushrooms,’ San said, after they’d walked into the bush a way. The mushrooms were growing on a fallen tree, and San headed straight for it.

‘Wait,’ Wooyoung said, ‘can’t mushrooms be dangerous?’

San glanced back at him. ‘They’re oyster mushrooms,’ he said, before turning back to carefully inspect the mushrooms, picking out some in particular. He took a shirt out to wrap them in.

‘But are you sure … even if they are, what if they’ve evolved to be poisonous to humans?’

‘Then I’ll eat one first, and if I get sick, you’ll know they’re no good.’

Wooyoung looked aghast.

‘It’s fine,’ San said. ‘We gotta take risks like this anyway, or we won’t be able to eat anything.’ And he broke off a piece of mushroom and popped it into his mouth.

‘San!’

‘It tastes fine.’ San shrugged, and finished the whole mushroom, because he was still hungry after breakfast. He packed the rest away though, in case Wooyoung wasn’t being overcautious.

‘If you get sick,’ Wooyoung said, ‘I’ll never forgive you.’

‘If I get sick,’ San said, ‘you’ll have to forgive me, because I might be dying, and you’d be sorry if you didn’t.’

‘I would not be sorry,’ Wooyoung said. ‘I’d hold it against you forever.’

‘I’m sure I’d feel very bad about that once I was dead,’ San said. But he sounded cheerful. He put the mushrooms in his bag, and he stood back up. ‘You wouldn’t really be mad, would you?’

Wooyoung frowned, and didn’t answer.

‘If we know we can eat them, it’s a good thing. Winter’s coming soon, so if we have things we can dry, then that’s good.’

‘Alright,’ Wooyoung said. ‘I get it. But you know you’re not expendable, right?’

San pulled a face, like maybe he didn’t agree.

They kept looking.

They found some of the rabbit creatures, and Wooyoung managed to hit one with a stone precisely enough that they didn’t have to worry about it biting, and San made a lot of noise that scared off the others. San paid more attention to the plants than Wooyoung did, and insisted on digging them up to check that they weren’t actually useful vegetables in disguise. There were some that looked like they could be a small type of onion, and they certainly smelt like onions, so those went in the backpack.

As it got closer to midday, San stopped all of a sudden, and he put his hand on his stomach.

‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I don’t feel so good.’

‘What?’

‘I think I might be sick.’

He went to a tree like he was going to retch, while Wooyoung said, ‘I told you not to eat it!’ in a slightly hysterical voice, before he realised that San was leaning against the tree and giggling, and not about to throw up at all.

Wooyoung hit him on the back, and San turned around and leaned against the tree and laughed harder.

‘Don’t do that!’ Wooyoung said.

‘I’m sorry,’ San said, not sounding sorry at all, and Wooyoung hit him again.

‘What if you actually get sick? It won’t be so funny then.’

San grabbed Wooyoung’s hand, and slid down until he was sitting against the tree, and Wooyoung was forced to crouch down with him.

‘Actually,’ San said, ‘I’m just hungry.’

‘Yeah? Me too.’

San closed his eyes. ‘What do you most want to eat now?’

Wooyoung didn’t answer right away. Then he answered, reluctantly, ‘Mum’s cooking.’

‘Oh.’

‘The whole family would be together and …’ He lifted his head, looking up through the treetops to the sky. ‘It wouldn’t be here. Not like this.’

San pulled him down into a hug, and they didn’t talk much for a while.

***

The lunch they made when they got back to camp turned out to have to serve more than expected – they were trial-cooking the onions when Hongjoong and the others arrived back.

Jungho made a show of collapsing dramatically when they arrived, but they gathered around Yunho quickly after that.

‘He’s asleep,’ Seonghwa said. ‘He hasn’t been awake much.’ He frowned. ‘Since yesterday.’ Yunho had remained dozy and feverish – Mingi had actually resorted to mopping his brow, which at least sounded dramatic even if it was of minimal effect.

‘The shelter was a no-go,’ Hongjoong said. He checked Yunho’s temperature himself, against the back of his hand. Too hot. ‘We didn’t even get there in the end. Um.’

‘We need to try and find this plant,’ Yeosang said. He took the notebook out and folded it open, passing it to Seonghwa first.

‘Whose handwriting is this?’ Seonghwa glanced up.

‘We met one of the other groups,’ Hongjoong said, sitting back wearily. ‘They didn’t have anything … it’s a bit complicated.’

‘We were late, apparently,’ Jongho said.

The notebook got passed around, while Hongjoong tried to explain what had happened with Dreamcatcher. That the other groups had been there for years. The small hope that this plant might help. He skipped what Yubin had told them at the end though, about why they’d left the other group.

San stared at the illustration the longest. ‘I might have seen it,’ he said.

‘What, really?’ Wooyoung said. ‘Today?’ He took the book back off San.

San nodded. He could picture the leaves, in colour. But whether he could find the place they’d grown again …

‘Let’s go then,’ Yeosang said. ‘You can find it again, right?’

That wasn’t a question San could say no to.

‘I don’t remember it at all,’ Wooyoung said.

‘It was after we stopped that time,’ San said. ‘When I pretended I was sick. You remember where we were?’

‘Yeah. We’ll go look for it, then,’ Wooyoung said, to Hongjoong.

‘Take the book with you,’ Hongjoong said.

The three of them, San, Wooyoung and Yeosang, headed out again. ‘I hope it is the right plant,’ San said.

‘I hope you’re not just making it up,’ Wooyoung said. San scowled at him.

‘I just want it to work,’ Yeosang said, which cut through everything else. Because it wasn’t as if this was a proper treatment, even if they did find it. Even if it lowered the fever, Yunho still had to fight the infection on his own.

San had remembered right – retracing their steps took a few tries, but when they found the spot, he went straight to it. ‘It’s this. I’m sure it is.’

Yeosang came so that they could compare the plant to Gahyeon’s illustrations.

‘It is, isn’t it?’ Wooyoung said. ‘So we should pick it?’

‘Yeah. That’s it.’

‘Should we take it all?’ San asked. There were a few small bushes of it, nestled up against a larger tree.

‘If we don’t end up needing it all, we can always dry it,’ Yeosang said. ‘Hopefully it still works either way.’

San pulled up the plants by the roots.

***

As per Gahyeon’s instructions, they steeped the herb as if it were tea. Seonghwa tasted it before they woke Yunho to give him any.

‘Does it taste like medicine?’ Mingi asked.

‘No,’ Seonghwa said. ‘You could drink it normally. Can we wake Yunho up?’

Mingi shook Yunho gently. ‘Hey, Yunho. Everyone’s back now. They’re here to see you.’

Yunho woke, but he wasn’t quite lucid – he blinked a lot, looking at Mingi, but he also seemed to look through him.

‘So there were two after all,’ he said.

‘No, eight,’ Mingi said. Hongjoong helped him to sit Yunho up, and then Seonghwa passed Hongjoong the bowl of tea.

‘Hey buddy,’ Hongjoong said. ‘We came back. So now you’ve got to get better, right?’

Yunho’s eyes came to a focus on Hongjoong. ‘It’s alright,’ he said. ‘ _He_ can take over.’

Hongjoong glanced over at the others. Seonghwa shrugged.

‘He’s been dreaming,’ he said.

‘We’ve got something for you to drink now,’ Hongjoong said. ‘Okay?’

‘Was it … from them?’

‘No,’ Hongjoong said, ‘we found it ourselves. Seonghwa already tried some, okay?’

‘Okay,’ Yunho said, and he let Hongjoong put the bowl to his lips. He managed to drink most of it without spilling.

‘Do you think we can use the leftover leaves as a poultice?’ San said. The steeped leaves had been left in the pot. ‘That’s what people used to do, right?’ Yunho’s wound had still been red and angry when they last checked it.

‘It can’t hurt,’ Seonghwa said. ‘They’re already boiled, so … maybe if it is like an anti-inflammatory, it will help.’

‘Otherwise what’s the next stage,’ Wooyoung said, ‘we have to amputate?’

‘Wooyoung,’ Seonghwa said.

‘That was a thing too, right? If an infection got too bad.’

‘It’s still just the bite that’s infected,’ Seonghwa said. ‘It’s not like he’s got blood poisoning.’

‘Do we know that?’

‘Let’s just give this a chance to work for now,’ Hongjoong said.

‘I’m just saying,’ Wooyoung said. ‘We have to be prepared.’

‘We can be prepared,’ Seonghwa said. ‘You don’t need to make it sound worse than it is.’

‘Hey,’ Mingi said, ‘when Yunho gets better, I’ll tell him you wanted to chop his arm off.’

‘That’s not what I’m saying –’

‘It’s okay,’ Hongjoong said. ‘We just have to be patient for a bit.’

‘We’ve been patient,’ Wooyoung said. ‘You guys were the ones who got to go do something.’

‘You did choose to stay behind,’ Jongho said.

‘I’m sure it wasn’t easy for either group,’ Hongjoong said. He frowned. ‘We shouldn’t split up again. Whatever we do, we do it together.’

‘That’s what Yunho would want too,’ Seonghwa said.

‘What about just going to look for food though?’ Wooyoung said.

‘I mean the whole spending nights away,’ Hongjoong said. ‘I don’t like it. If we get lost ...’ They hadn’t, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it. ‘It’s better to stay together.’

‘Ah, hyung,’ Jongho said. ‘But what if we need to sneak off to trade with those Dreamcatcher women?’

‘Why would that be “sneaking off”?’

‘I know,’ Wooyoung said, ‘it’s cos Jongho likes an older woman.’

‘We’re going back, right?’ Jongho said, ignoring Wooyoung except for the peevishness in his voice. ‘Unless we want to go in the complete other direction again, we need to borrow off them.’

‘Why can’t we just go back to the sea?’ San asked, folding his arms around his knees. ‘We know there’s plenty of food there.’

‘We can stay by the sea,’ Hongjoong said. ‘But we need the kind of supplies they have at the shelter. And I don’t think we want to be too far away from people.’

‘It’s not like we need them,’ San said. ‘It’s not like they even want us, from what you said -- ’

‘I said they were surprised.’

Yeah, Gayheon even told us to come back,’ Jongho added.

San opened his mouth, but Wooyoung spoke first. ‘What about the other group they mentioned?’ he asked. ‘You don’t think we should find them?’

Hongjoong glanced at Jongho and Yeosang.

‘They were pretty adamant about the kind of people they were,’ Yeosang said. ‘Just because there are others, it doesn’t necessarily mean we want to join them.’

‘That’s what I said,’ San said.

‘But more people is better, right?’ Wooyoung said. He was talking to Yeosang, not San, and he didn’t notice the dirty look San gave him for it.

‘That depends,’ Yeosang said.

‘And they might have more useful skills, right? Like when someone gets sick like this –’ he gestured at Yunho.

‘They’re still a long way away though,’ Hongjoong said. ‘Even if we did want to, I don’t think we could get there before winter.’

‘What about the other shelter?’ Mingi asked. ‘Then we’d have those resources, and we wouldn’t have to worry about sharing.’

‘You don’t think we should try and stick with the others?’ Hongjoong asked.

‘It’s not that,’ Mingi said. He glanced at San. ‘But if we’re not sure we can rely on them …’

‘I think we can,’ Jongho said.

While the others cast aspersions on Jongho’s ability to judge character, San slipped away from the group. Casually, as if he was just going to the bathroom rather than going off in a huff.

He wished Yunho were awake. At least Yunho would listen to what San had to say.

He walked far enough that he couldn’t make out the others’ voices, and sat down against a tree, leaning his head against the trunk. It was so quiet, he thought, in a forest without birds. There were the insects, but it wasn’t the same.

It wasn’t long before Seonghwa came to join him. San flicked a glance up at him, and then looked determinedly away. Seonghwa didn’t say anything, but he sat down, and so San was forced to speak first.

‘You didn’t have to check up on me.’

‘No?’

‘I’m not that bothered … I just wanted to be quiet for a bit.’

‘Okay,’ Seonghwa said. Seonghwa was good at being quiet. San was the one who felt like he had to fill the silence, even if no-one would listen anyway.

‘Why do we have to be with other people?’ San asked. ‘What’s wrong with it just being us?’

‘We’re humans,’ Seonghwa said. ‘And we’d get sick of each other if we never saw anyone else.’

San shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t.’

‘Why _don’t_ you want to join the other group?’

San sighed. When he thought about it, it seemed such a small answer. ‘Cos it’s nice not to have to perform in your daily life.’

‘Oh?’

‘When I think about people who don’t know us … going back to that … it feels kind of … claustrophobic?’ He glanced at Seonghwa. He thought if any of them understood, Seonghwa would. ‘I know it’s stupid,’ he went on, ‘and I should just get over it. It’s not like we’re on holiday. But I like not having to worry about other people.’ He hid his face behind his arms. ‘That’s terrible, isn’t it? Everyone’s dead.’

‘It would be easier to pretend we were on holiday.’

‘It doesn’t matter anyway,’ San said, closing his eyes. ‘We’ll just do what everyone else wants.’

Seonghwa rubbed his back. ‘It’s not like there’s a rush,’ he said. ‘We’ve got the rest of our lives.’

San choked on a laugh.

‘What we do right now … we can always do something else later. If we don’t go too far away now … isn’t that just keeping our options open?’

San pulled a face. ‘Stop sounding sensible.’

‘Sorry.’

San sighed, and he leaned his head against Seonghwa’s shoulder, and his weight against his side.

‘I want to go home,’ San said.

‘I know.’

He’d never thought before, that home was a time and not a place. It was time and it was people. And now the eight of them together were all they had.

Changing that was scary.

***

‘Hey,’ Hongjoong said, when Seonghwa had come back to the campsite. ‘Was San okay?’

Seonghwa nodded, slowly. They walked a little distance up the river, away from the others. ‘I don’t think it’s really about whether we join the others,’ he said. ‘Or not just that.’

‘It’s not a bad thing to be cautious,’ Hongjoong said. If San knew why it was Dreamcatcher had left the others, he’d probably freak out even further; that was only one of the reasons Hongjoong didn’t feel inclined to mention it.

‘I guess the question is,’ he said, ‘what are we meant to do here? I mean –’ He laced his fingers together – ‘were they expecting that we would go out and repopulate the earth?’ It was an international project, the letter had said; it still seemed like a tiny number of people. ‘That’s a lot of responsibility.’

‘I don’t think we have to do anything.’

Hongjoong waited for him to go on.

‘We didn’t volunteer for this. Maybe whoever did this would say we owe it to them, but … well, they’re not here. We are.’ He looked out toward the river. It was lower now, but he couldn’t forget the strength of it. ‘We can just live here until we die. We don’t have to do anything more than that.’

‘Well, that’s a bit bleak.’

Seonghwa’s lip curled into a smile.

‘I guess Dreamcatcher must’ve decided the same thing,’ Hongjoong said. ‘What was it she said? They _disagreed on what kind of society they wanted to build._ ’

‘Right,’ Seonghwa said.

‘You think it’s okay to just live here?’

Seonghwa nodded.

‘Okay,’ Hongjoong said, ‘I’ll believe you.’


	8. Chapter 8

‘I wish we had a thermometre,’ San said. ‘I can’t tell if he’s getting better or not.’ Yunho had slept through San checking his temperature, but now it was time for breakfast. ‘Oi, Yunho!’

‘Stop pinching me,’ Yunho said. ‘I’m awake.’ His voice was bleary, but he sounded lucid, at least.

‘How are you feeling?’ Hongjoong waited for Yunho to pull himself upright, and then passed him his food.

“Um,’ Yunho said. ‘Pretty rotten.’ He looked down at his bowl and he stared at it. ‘Why is there kimchi?’ He looked back up at Hongjoong, who was hiding a smile. ‘When did you get back?’ He looked around for Yeosang and Jongho too. Everyone was there.

‘We got back yesterday,’ Hongjoong said. ‘We did wake you up.’

‘Oh,’ Yunho said. ‘I thought that was a dream.’ He still wasn’t sure _this_ wasn’t a dream. Although it was rather peaceful, for a fever dream. ‘And the kimchi?’ He frowned. ‘This isn’t, like, 500 years old, is it?’

Hongjoong laughed then. ‘No, we actually didn’t make it to the shelter. But that’s because someone else got there first.’

‘What?’

‘We’re not alone.’ Hongjoong wriggled his fingers. ‘Hooray?’

They had to explain the situation again, but somehow, Dreamcatcher’s lukewarm response to them seemed less of a blow when it was Yunho you were talking to. Maybe it was knowing that Dreamcatcher _had_ survived three years already. That meant the eight of them could survive as well. And if Yunho was starting to feel better …

‘You need to have some of this too,’ Yeosang said, remembering the tea. ‘It’s meant to help with the fever.’

‘Ah, herbal medicine,’ Yunho said, and he accepted a bowl of the tea from Yeosang. He took a cautious sip. ‘It doesn’t even taste awful.’

Yeosang sat back on his heels, feeling pleased.

‘It seems to have helped too,’ Seonghwa said. When Yunho looked quizzical, he explained. ‘We gave you some yesterday.’

‘Wow,’ Yunho said, ‘I really was out of it.’ He finished the tea and set the bowl aside. He felt somewhat worn out, from the eating and the talking. He pulled his sleeping bag tighter around himself. ‘Sorry to cause so much trouble,’ he said.

‘You’re not trouble,’ Hongjoong said. ‘We got back alright, didn’t we?’

‘Yeah,’ Wooyoung said, ‘San and Seonghwa are the ones who got into trouble.’

‘Hang on, what?’

Seonghwa gave Wooyoung a very flat look.

‘They decided to go swimming,’ Wooyoung said.

‘We fell in.’

‘You didn’t tell me that,’ Hongjoong said.

‘It already happened,’ Seonghwa said. ‘It’s not important.’

‘Yeah, we’re both fine,’ San said. ‘It was just with all the rain. The bank caved in, see?’ He pointed.

Hongjoong had noticed the spot, when they came back across the river, but he hadn’t realised what it meant. It hadn’t occurred to him he needed to worry about the others while he was away, and not just Yunho.

‘I’m never going away again,’ he muttered.

***

After breakfast, they had to hunt for food again. Wooyoung had asked Yeosang to go with him and San, but Yeosang said no.

‘Seonghwa wants to do laundry,’ he said. He did felt a little as if he were doing San and Wooyoung a favour, but he was tired. And he wanted to keep an eye on Yunho.

‘Really?’ Wooyoung said.

Seonghwa, who had overheard, said, ‘I never said that.’

‘You didn’t need to,’ Yeosang said. ‘I could tell by your face.’ Not that he was looking at Seonghwa at the time.

‘Does laundry need more than one person?’ San said.

‘Do you see a washing machine?’ Yeosang asked. He waved his hand dismissively. ‘You two go.’

Wooyoung shrugged, and he put an arm around San, and off they went.

‘Unless you wanted to join them?’ Yeosang asked Seonghwa.

‘ _I_ wasn’t invited.’

‘I want to go,’ Yunho said. He knocked his head back against the tree he was sitting against, like a bored child.

‘Are you all better yet?’

‘He’s not going anywhere,’ Seonghwa said.

Yunho lifted his eyebrows toward Seonghwa, as if Seonghwa were an excuse he was using. It made Yeosang smile.

Seonghwa and Yeosang did do the laundry – they never would have heard the end of it from Wooyoung otherwise. It was hard work – no washing machine, no detergent, just their own effort.

‘I never realised what our ancestors went through,’ Yunho said, watching from where he sat. ‘I feel bad just sitting here.’ He started to get up to join them.

‘You’re still sick,’ Seonghwa said sharply. And indeed, Yunho did feel a little dizzy, just from the change in posture.

‘Don’t make us come over there,’ Yeosang said.

Yunho sat back down meekly. He was sure there was _something_ he could be doing. But then didn’t it always feel like that when you were recovering from an illness? Once you were past the bad part. Not that he wanted to think about when he’d been sick as a kid, having his mother stay home with him …

These guys were all he had left.

When the laundry was done, they didn’t hang it out to dry right away, stopping to take a drink. Yeosang showed Seonghwa his wrinkly fingers, laughing.

Yunho did go and join them then. He had to sit down very quickly, but it made him feel more normal to be with them.

Yeosang wiped his mouth, and he offered his water bottle to Yunho. Yunho took a mouthful, and handed it back.

It was a sunny day again; the sound of the river was cooling, the water clear. ‘It’s not so bad when it’s like this,’ Yunho said. The river looked almost innocent.

‘It’s not bad,’ Yeosang said. 

‘Where do you think we should go?’ Yunho asked. They’d filled him in on that part of the debate. ‘Do you think we should stay in this area?’

Yeosang nodded. They’d told Yubin and Gahyeon that they would, after all.

‘I kind of wish I could go home,’ Yunho said. ‘Just to see.’ At Yeosang’s surprised face, he went on. ‘I think it would feel more real.’ 

‘It’s already too real,’ Seonghwa muttered.

‘Wouldn’t you want to?’ Yunho asked.

Seonghwa shook his head. ‘What’s the point? It’s not there any more.’

‘So unsentimental.’

‘I get it,’ Yeosang said. ‘I think if we hadn’t been so close, I wouldn’t have wanted to.’ It felt almost like a betrayal of his hometown, to say that. But seeing it hadn’t been _better_.

‘How many centuries of human history, lost …’ Yunho said. ‘Ah, but it’s all archaeology now.’ He laid back on the earth and squinted into the sun. ‘Is there any food left?’

‘We’re not meant to eat without the others,’ Seonghwa said.

‘So I’m too sick to help with laundry,’ Yunho said, ‘but not sick enough to eat what I like.’

‘You’re not sick from malnutrition,’ Seonghwa retorted. But he looked at Yunho consideringly.

‘Let him eat,’ Yeosang said. ‘He needs the energy to get better.’

‘I’m not saying he can’t eat,’ Seonghwa said. ‘I just said we were meant to be waiting.’

‘You don’t think that if the others find something good, they’re not snacking as they eat.’

‘I don’t think that.’

‘You’re right. They’re probably doing other stuff instead.’

‘What?’

‘San and Wooyoung, at least. There’s gotta be some benefit to the world being ended, right? Not being watched all the time ...’

‘Um.’ Seonghwa glanced at Yeosang.

‘They need to eat too,’ Yeosang said. And then, when Yunho’s eyes lit up, ‘No, don’t say it; I’m not listening.’

Feeding Yunho shut him up – they still had some pears, and Seonghwa divided one carefully between the three of them. Maybe later they would have to ration themselves, but it was hard to feel the pressure at the moment. They hadn’t been hungry enough yet.

Afterwards, Yunho was tired out, just from chatting and eating, and he took the opportunity to slump against Yeosang.

‘Hey, I’m not your bed.’

‘We don’t have beds any more,’ Yunho said. ‘You’re more comfortable.’

Yeosang patted Yunho’s head, not really bothered by being used as a pillow. He looked over at Seonghwa. ‘I guess you’re hanging the washing out alone.’

Seonghwa gave him an unamused look. But he let Yeosang keep Yunho company.

***

The next day, Yunho had improved again. His fever had dropped, and the skin around his bite had lost its red shiny look.

‘You’re going to have a decent scar though,’ Jongho commented.

‘Oh?” Yunho said. ‘Will it make me look tough?’ He made his hand into a fist, feeling the way the skin drew tight around the bite. It had only just begun to heal.

‘Definitely,’ Jongho said. ‘Tougher than you do now, at any rate.’

Yunho laughed.

‘Once you’re all the way better,’ Hongjoong said, ‘we need to decide where to go.’ He’d reclaimed the maps from Yeosang, and he looked at the larger one now. ‘If we try and make it to the northern shelter, it’s going to be at least a week walking. And we don’t know what we’ll find there.’ He glanced around the group, eyes stopping on San in particular. ‘Otherwise, we stick with going west.’

He flicked through the regional maps till he found the right one. ‘Maybe one of these areas?’ There were a number of little inlets that had formed in the hills; they’d passed that way on the way to Palgongsan, although the weather had meant they weren’t inclined to stop and admire the scenery. ‘That means we could get to Dreamcatcher and back within a day if we needed to. And we’d be by the sea.’

‘You don’t need to make it sound like you’re trying to convince us,’ San said. ‘You already know which way you want to go.’

‘Sure.’ Hongjoong met San’s eyes steadily; San looked away first.

‘You’re our leader,’ he muttered. ‘You should just tell us where we’re going.’

Hongjoong wasn’t sure that leading an idol group was the same as leading them in this sort of situation; still, if no-one else was going to say that, he certainly couldn’t.

‘Okay,’ he said instead. ‘We’re going west then.’ He looked over at Yunho. ‘Not right away though. We don’t want you collapsing on us.’

‘I don’t want to collapse on you either,’ Yunho said. ‘Mingi, maybe. Not you.’

‘Rude,’ Hongjoong said. ‘Maybe I liked you better when you were sick.’

It was the sort of thing he could say only because he did believe Yunho was getting better.

***

It was an overnight walk, to get to the bay they had in mind. The weather was overcast on the first day, but the second morning it cleared. They crested the hill to see their goal laid out before them: a bay among bays, the water a sparkling blue against the green of the hills.

‘This is nicer than the last time around,’ Yeosang said. Then, the hills had been shrouded in grey, and they hadn’t wanted to stop to admire the view.

Yunho came up behind him; he was breathing more heavily than Yeosang, but he was getting stronger. ‘We should go swimming,’ he said. ‘Hey, San, you want to go swimming on purpose this time?’

San, who was already descending the slope, made a rude gesture back at him.

Yeosang hid a laugh, and Yunho looked at him slyly, before he began to make his way down the slope. ‘You’re feeling more cheerful,’ Yunho commented.

Yeosang scrambled down behind him. ‘Yeah, well,’ he said, ‘I’m trying not to think about it.’

‘Good plan.’ Yunho took a breath. ‘We’re young, we’re healthy –’

‘Mostly healthy.’

‘– we’re not even the only people left in the world! What could be wrong?’

Yeosang thought about Yubin and Gahyeon, as they’d left them. And he said, ‘I think it will be okay. Did you want to go meet them?’

‘Who, Dreamcatcher? Of course.’

He said it as if it were obvious. Probably, even if Yeosang told him why Dreamcatcher had left the other group, he would just say something like, ‘they must have had a good reason,’ and roll with it. Yunho was good like that.

‘Let’s go soon, then,’ Yeosang said. ‘I’m sure they’d like to know that you’re better.’

They made their way down to the shore, to a spot near a river where they could make camp.

‘I feel like we should have a better way of choosing where to stay,’ Jongho said, surveying their surroundings, ‘than just, “oh well, this seems good enough.”’

‘Do you think anyone ever has a really good reason?’ Hongjoong asked. ‘Why not, “we’re tired, let’s stop?”’

‘I guess we’re as likely to starve to death here as anywhere else,’ Jongho said. He sat back down on the sand, and watched the waves. You couldn’t see any hint from here what might be swallowed beneath them.

‘We’re not going to starve to death,’ Seonghwa said.

‘You’re right. Some of us will resort to cannibalism first.’

‘Jongho!’

Jongho laughed.

They wouldn’t resort to cannibalism. They’d make camp for the night, and go swimming, and in the morning they’d argue about what exactly they would need to build and which trees would need to come down, and who of them knew anything about building anyway.

Later, Yunho and Yeosang would make the hike over to the Dreamcatcher village, to tell them the news, and to borrow as many tools as they could carry. Later again, they would go over just for the sake of it.

But for now, they just enjoyed the stopping.


End file.
